


Disassembly

by ohgodmyeyes



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Original Trilogy
Genre: Age Difference, Aging, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Anakin Skywalker Needs a Hug, Anakin is 60+, Angst, Attachment, Bechdel Test Fail, Body Worship, Canon-Typical Amputation, Caregiving, Characters Sitting In Kitchens Talking, Christmas, Cooking, Disability, Domestic, Drama, Drinking, Drunk Sex, F/M, Family, Financial Issues, Fluff, Getting to Know Each Other, Guilt, Injury, Intimacy, Luke Skywalker Needs A Hug, Luke is a mechanic, Mortality, Multi, Peripheral Smut, Reader is a simp for both of these men, Reader-Insert, Relationship(s), Romance, Secrets, Skywalker Family Drama, Slice of Life, Smoking, Snowed In, Trauma, depressing?, domestic angst, eventual infidelity, lol i know, perhaps slightly more pornographic than I intended it to be, slow burn???, the Gulf War
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-07
Updated: 2021-03-06
Packaged: 2021-03-08 01:33:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 32
Words: 91,112
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26877496
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ohgodmyeyes/pseuds/ohgodmyeyes
Summary: You are a recently-unemployed personal support worker living with your boyfriend, Luke Skywalker.Luke's father is a severely-injured veteran of a war that ended when you were just a baby, and whose own previous assistant just so happens to have quit.The younger of the two believes that you are the perfect candidate to take on the task of helping his dad; however, you are more than a little reluctant to spend your days working with a man who invariably seems to be in a terrible mood.After some cajoling (and the promise of more money than you earned at your previous job), you agree to take on the task despite your reservations.Is Anakin really just an ornery old man who disdains any and every form of social contact, or does his 'uniqueness' have the potential to put all of you in a supremely uncomfortable position?
Relationships: Anakin Skywalker/Reader, Luke Skywalker/Reader
Comments: 536
Kudos: 278





	1. Bacon Bits

**Author's Note:**

> People seemed to like it the last time I marked the porny chapters with an asterisk (*), so I'm going to go ahead and do that again.
> 
> I'm not going to tell you who you're getting though, lol.
> 
> (Full disclosure: this is probably _not_ the story you were looking for, but the joy I've taken in writing it is thus far is virtually unrivalled. I hope that comes through, if you decide to give it a try.)

It was fun to make Caesar salad. You liked the smell of the Parmesan cheese, and you liked the pepper, too. You enjoyed adding far too much garlic, and you were proud of the dressing, because you always mixed it yourself. It was a pretty standard recipe, with a few minor adjustments— you and Luke had come up with it yourselves, fairly early-on in your relationship. He liked it with an extra shot of Dijon mustard; you would add more lemon juice than would otherwise have been called for. He'd surprised you when you'd met him by being an effective cook; he said he'd learned because he'd grown up without his mother, and that neither his father nor his sister were especially effective in the kitchen. 

He would typically have been here helping you to chop garlic or dice bacon, but tonight he wasn't, because tonight he was late. 

You took a peek at the clock on the stove, and noticed just how late he was. You'd have texted him, but your fingers were slick with oil, and so you went on with what you were doing instead. Luke was rarely late; he worked as a mechanic, and when it was time to quit and go home, he just about always did exactly that. He'd always been reliable, and that was part of why you loved him.

Wherever he was and whatever he was doing, you hoped he'd make it home before you started to worry.

By the time you'd mixed the dressing and stuck a tray full of tiny, uncooked bits of bacon under the broiler, you were just about ready to bug him. Luke never minded when you bugged him; if anything, he appreciated that you cared. That was another thing about him of which you were particularly fond.

As you dried off your hands and went to pick up your phone, though, the door to the apartment you shared together opened, negating both your concern and the need to send that text.

"You okay?" you asked. "Did something keep you at work?" Luke liked his job, and while he usually came home on time, you also knew he'd have had no problem staying late if it happened to be required of him.

"Not exactly," he said, following you into the kitchen after sharing with you a quick-but-warm embrace. "I think I have some good news, though."

"Hm?" That could have meant just about anything, really. 

He opened the oven and stuck his face into it so he could examine the bacon, just as you'd have expected him to. Once he'd closed it back up again, he stood up straight and told you, "I might have just got you a new job." 

Your eyes lit up and a smile spread across your face. You'd been looking for a new job for weeks, having been laid off by the care home at which you'd worked before. They couldn't afford to keep you; anyhow, they'd sold off one of their own buildings recently for the purpose of downsizing. You'd never expected to have to look for new work, if only because personal support workers were fairly consistently in high-demand. Despite that, you'd been out of luck for a little over a month now, and had been starting to feel somewhat desperate.

"Where?" you asked, taking his hand and drawing him in close. It was just like him to do something like this for you, you thought; besides being both reliable and appreciative, Luke was thoughtful as well. 

"How would you feel about working with someone in their own house?"

You tilted your head, because there was a hint of nervousness in his voice, and you weren't sure why it would have been there. "I'd feel fine about it," you answered, because that was certainly something you'd done before— albeit, before you'd ever met Luke.

"Well," he said, "my dad's old assistant quit on him, and he needs—"

"Your _dad?"_

You certainly didn't mean to sound as incredulous as you were sure you sounded just then; however, Luke's dad was unlike anyone you'd ever cared for previously. Part of you doubted that he actually needed as much help as his children insisted he have, but that might only have been because of his overall demeanour. Luke had told you that he used to be able to do a lot more for himself; however, the past few years had apparently been rough on him. You didn't know him all that well yourself, but you'd met him enough times to know all about his attitude.

Luke, indeed, seemed to grow both defensive and apologetic all at once. "He's not as bad as you think he is," he said, pulling back to look at you. "And he can't be in that house by himself all day; not anymore. Anyway, it's Veteran's Affairs that would be paying you, and they're not stingy about guys like him. You'd still get to come home at night... and you said you wanted to find something that paid more than your last job, didn't you?"

"I did," you admitted, "but—"

 _"So just think about it,"_ he interrupted, and now he sounded like he was ready to start pleading with you. You didn't like when he'd do that, if only because he made it almost impossible for you to refuse him. Between the way his big, blue eyes looked when he was asking for something he thought he needed, and the way his fine, wispy blonde hair tended to fall into them, he had an effect on you that no one else had ever seemed to have. 

"It'll cut your commute in half," he went on, "and you'll be doing what you were trained to do. Besides that, we'll have more money in the bank if you go ahead and take the job." He smiled, then, and took your hand again. You'd talked a lot about buying a house together recently, despite knowing that you didn't exactly have the kind of money on-hand that would enable you to make such a large purchase. 

You didn't especially like that he had a point, here. 

"Your dad is—" you started, but he squeezed your fingers and cut you off again.

"...He's _different._ Believe me, I know better than anyone that he's different— but he's not really as much of an asshole as he makes himself out to be. He's actually really—"

"He told me to fuck off the last time I tried to open a door for him," you reminded Luke, not letting him finish that particular thought. "Not once, but _twice."_ He'd been rude on several other occasions, too, and Luke knew it. At first, you'd thought he had an aversion to you specifically; however, the things his children tended to reveal about him told you it was more likely than not that he was like that with just about everyone.

Luke sighed, looking somewhat defeated. He knew you were right; he'd seen it for himself. "That was before his last person quit," he tried. "He knows he needs the help, whether he wants to say so out loud or not. Anyway, like I said, it's convenient— _and_ you'll make more money." He hadn't stopped squeezing your fingers yet. You squeezed back, because you knew how much he loved his dad... even if you didn't always quite understand why. "Won't you just think about it?" he finished, looking as hopeful as you'd ever seen anyone look.

This time you were the one who sighed before agreeing (albeit not without a note of reluctance), "Alright; fine. I'll think about it. But—"

"Shh," smiled Luke, clearly grateful for your concession, but also obviously not in the mood to hear about all of the things that might put you off the idea of caring for his dad.

You took his cue; leaned in, and gave him a kiss. He was sweet— yet another reason you'd come to love him as much as you did. It occurred to you that since his dad had raised him virtually by himself, then he must have had one thing or another to do with it. 

...Or, maybe Luke had simply been born that way. The more you considered it, the more that seemed just as distinct a possibility.

You decided to stop considering anything at all for a few minutes after that. When you pulled back from Luke, though, you realized that the bacon in the oven was starting to smell a little overdone. You said as much, and he jumped into action for you while you cleared off some space on the counter to put the hot pan. 

It really would be nice, you thought offhandedly, to be able to afford a house with a bigger kitchen.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Basically, I started to want to bang overly-concerned Luke around the end of 'Eventide' even though it wouldn't have fit there, and I've been wanting to write something approaching Anakin's canon injuries into a real-life setting for a while now. So, I've started yet another calamity of a fanfic to satiate my own weird desires.


	2. Ten Minutes

"Hey," said Luke, wrapping his arm around you as he crawled into bed behind you. You'd already been very close to falling asleep, but didn't mind his attention at all. 

"Hey," you smiled back, eyes still shut. You clasped his hand in yours atop your chest, enjoying how warm he felt as you scooted backwards to press yourself into him. It had been a couple of days now since your Caesar salad with the burnt bacon bits.

First he ventured to give you a tight squeeze, which felt wonderful; after that, he nosed your hair out of his way and kissed at your earlobe. That felt even better. You let him know just how much you liked it by making a very contented sound, and beginning to shift your body so that you could turn over to meet him face-to-face. Luke was nothing if not affectionate, and you always appreciated his openness when it came to showing you the way he felt. 

Once you'd rolled over and begun to plant a tight grouping of tiny kisses on the side of his mouth, he asked you seemingly out of nowhere, "So... have you finished thinking about whether or not you want to go and work for my dad?"

That made you pull your head back to give him a look, because the last thing you'd have expected him to bring up right now was his father. "I... well, I don't really know yet," you answered, with just a bit of incredulity.

"I already talked to him about it," Luke went on, apparently not registering your expression. "Even he said he'd be willing to give it a try."

You sighed. "I always thought he didn't like me all that much, you know." You weren't particularly fond of him either, but you didn't feel the need to say so right then.

"He doesn't like _anybody._ I've already told you it's not just you. Anyway, Leia went to see him yesterday, and she says that if you don't want the job, she's going to find someone else herself."

That gave you pause— once again, part of you had always doubted that Luke's dad needed as much help as his kids tended to think he did. You were aware of the fact that there was a lot 'wrong' with him; however, he'd always struck you as being someone who insisted upon being incredibly independent, ever since you had come to know his family. Part of you couldn't imagine helping him with all of the things Luke had told you he needed help with.

"...How bad is it?" you asked anyhow, a bit less tactfully than you might have if you'd been entirely awake.

"Bad enough," said Luke plainly, although not without some discomfort. "You already know he doesn't cook; he's barely been eating. His breathing's not great, and the house is too big for him to clean by himself. Besides that, he's been leaving his limbs on for way too long because there's nobody around to tell him not to."

"He'll get a skin infection that way," you pointed out, both uselessly and somewhat irreverently. 

It just so happened that Luke's father had lost his limbs— all four of them— to a bomb he'd been trying to disarm in Iraq at the behest of his commanding officer during the short-but-brutal Gulf War. Luke and his sister hadn't been born yet when it had happened; the first time Anakin had ever held his children, he'd done so with a set of plastic arms (his wife's death had coincided with Luke and Leia's birth, and their father's return due to his injury). All things considered, you supposed he had every reason to be ornery... but, on the other hand, you'd assisted clients who'd been just as physically impaired as he was, and impairment or not, Anakin Skywalker had to be one of the most prickly people you had ever met. 

"I know," Luke said in response to your observation, "and if he's not eating or cleaning the house, it's only going to get worse. Leia's right; he needs someone new, and he needs them soon. I was _really_ hoping you would—"

 _"Okay,"_ you interrupted, because you knew Luke wasn't going to stop until you made a decision, preferably the one he regarded as being 'correct'. You supposed that was one way in which he really was like his dad: If he had an opinion, then that was that; he wasn't liable to change it for anyone or anything. Aside from that, you couldn't help but notice when you looked past him that the crack in the plaster which had always run down the length of your bedroom wall was looking worse than ever.

You really did need a job that paid half-decently; a job precisely like that happened to be staring you in the face right now. It might not have been ideal, but there really was no such thing as perfect employment, was there?

"So does that mean you'll give it a shot?" asked Luke, his face lighting up with the precise smile to which you'd been drawn when you had first met him. 

"Yes," you said. "Yes, that means I'll give it a try. But if it doesn't work—"

 _"It'll work,"_ he promised you. "You're great at what you do; he'll warm up to you in no time. Anyway, his last person worked with him for four years— I don't think I'd trust any stranger as much as I trust you. You might not be his biggest fan right now, but once you get to know him, you'll see how nice he can really be."

It was extremely difficult for you to envision Anakin being anything even approaching 'nice', but now that you'd gone and made Luke happy by promising to try to work with him, you weren't about to change your mind. Not, at least, before making an attempt at doing what had been asked of you. 

"If you say so," was the only answer you had to Luke's assurances. After that, you asked him, "When do I start, then? Tomorrow?" 'Tomorrow' was Monday— as good a day as any to begin at a new job, you thought.

Luke nodded. "I've already done a bunch of the paperwork; the rest of it is at his house. Just fill out all the stuff I highlighted, and I'll turn it in to Veteran's Affairs. Like I said, they're not stingy about guys like my dad— whatever he puts you through, they'll at least make it worth your while."

You couldn't help but laugh at his roundabout way of admitting that this might, indeed, prove to be more of a challenge for you than he'd previously let on. 

"That's not to say I _expect_ him to be a jerk," he qualified hastily, "I just mean—"

"Stop," you said gently. "Let's quit talking about your dad for a few minutes." Frankly, you wanted to get back to what you thought had been happening before Luke had brought up the issue in the first place. Not that you didn't respect his concern with regard to his father, but when you were alone in bed together, the man who'd raised him was just about the last thing you wanted to be thinking about.

You leaned in to kiss him; this time, you did so with a bit more insistence. His mind apparently having been put at ease (at least for the moment), he returned your affection eagerly, replacing his arm around you and drawing you in close to his body.

Regardless of the kind of money you might end up earning by agreeing to this, making Luke happy was more than worth taking on the task of trying to work with his dad. 

...

"You're early," Anakin told you pointedly, seeming distinctly annoyed and looking as though he'd just woken up. 

Although he was standing before you wearing a full set of four prosthetic limbs, his hair was all over the place, there was an unlit cigarette hanging loosely out of his mouth, and his eyes were still bleary. He didn't look entirely unlike his own son; in fact, their cursory resemblance might have been the only thing that had ever even begun to endear you to the elder of the two of them. Somewhat unlike Luke, though, his father was all angles— he was also covered in scars, broad enough across his shoulders that he seemed intimidating even without any flesh-hewn arms or legs, and far rougher around the edges than either of his offspring. 

Given what you knew he'd been through coupled with the fact that he was more than sixty years old, though, all of that was to be expected. 

You took a peek at your phone. "I'm only early by ten minutes," you excused yourself. "The drive wasn't as long as I expected it to be, and I figured it was better to come sooner rather than—"

"Fuck," he interrupted, shaking his head and stepping aside. "Come in, I guess— but I need another fucking coffee before you start screwing around. Okay?"

"...Okay," you said, and you somewhat hesitantly stepped into the house.

Today was your very first day of working with Luke's father, and although you'd only been here for about thirty seconds, it already appeared to you that things were going precisely the way you'd have expected. You supposed that if you were going to give this a fair chance, you'd have to let go of how the way he spoke to you made you feel. It really did seem as if he was like this with everyone— and if the last person to assist him could put up with it, then you were fairly sure you could learn to do the same.

Upon entering the house, the first thing you found yourself wanting to do was open up every single one of the windows. Aside from it being a bit dark for your liking, the air was heavy with cigarette smoke. You'd always known that Luke's dad was a smoker, but just how enthusiastically he happened to partake in his habit had never been quite so evident to you as it was right now. 

"Do you think it'd be alright if I let some air in here?" you asked, tentatively following him into the kitchen. Anakin walked _almost_ like anyone else would have walked, with the assistance of a set of highly advanced-looking mechanical legs. He nearly always wore shorts, which you already knew allowed him to apply his lower limbs to his body with relative ease, and remove them from it too (although you'd never actually seen him absent any of his prostheses). 

It would have taken a keen eye to notice that his gait was halting. His legs had been amputated about half-way down, and the replacements which had been fitted to their remnants functioned fairly seamlessly. False knees and ankles moved as he walked with the help of both naturally swinging joints and internal computer mechanisms; the plastic polymers and reinforced steel making up both the outer casing and foundations were sleek and modern. It would be interesting, you supposed, to learn a bit more about the way they worked over the course of the time you were about to spend together— you were a support worker, after all, not a prosthetist; you'd never assisted anyone with four replacement limbs before. 

"If you really feel like you have to," Anakin conceded gruffly to the notion of cracking open a window. He did so without looking back at you, and he spoke through the filter of his still-unlit cigarette. 

He was already at the kitchen counter, using the left one of his artificial hands to pour coffee from the pot he'd apparently made to wake up with before you'd arrived. The extremity was more of a rounded steel hook than a hand, really— it could open and close like a pincer, and he used it for what you'd have described as gross motor activities. The one he wore on his right was more like an actual hand, with a palm and independently moving digits; he used that one to accomplish tasks which required a bit more finesse. Both of his arms seemed to be made from the same sleek plastic and ultra-durable steel as his legs, and were attached to his body by dark, faux-leather wrappings. Those disappeared beneath the short sleeves of his shirt.

Both the coffee pot's handle and the exterior of his mug were wrapped tightly in what looked to be thin, pliable layers of foam. You supposed this was to make them easier to pick up with his steel extremities.

You walked over to the window in the kitchen, and pushed it open about half-way. It was breezy outside, and although it was still summer, it tended to be cool in the morning. You didn't mind; it felt nice, and you appreciated the way it helped to dissipate the copious amount of smoke permeating the air. 

"It's fucking _cold_ ," was the next thing Luke's dad said to you, eyeing the open window disdainfully as he sat down at the table with his cup of coffee. Carefully and deliberately, he plucked a match out of a ceramic bowl with his right hand, and took one of the tiny wooden sticks between his artificial fingers. He struck it against a well-used piece of fine-grit sandpaper he kept taped to the surface of the table next to the bowl of matches; it ignited immediately, and he used it to light the cigarette he'd had hanging from his lips since he'd first answered the door.

An expression of relief washed over his face at his first inhale; you let him sit in silence while he enjoyed it— and he really did seem to be enjoying it. 

...Or at least, he did until he started coughing.

"Are you okay?" you asked, stepping toward him in case you wound up being needed. 

_"Fine,"_ he managed to breathe, as his coughing fit petered out and he resumed smoking.

"Luke said he left some paperwork—"

"Does my coffee mug look empty to you?" he asked, staring ahead of himself at nothing.

"No," you answered, "it doesn't."

"Then that means I'm not ready to start fucking around yet." He peered up at a clock hanging on the far wall. "If you knocked on the door right now, you'd _still_ be five minutes early."

"I'm sorry," you said. "Next time I'll—"

"You'll show up when you're supposed to," he finished for you, and then he resumed his silence. He used his hook to pick up and drink his coffee (it might have looked awkward, but for him it clearly wasn't), and his hand to smoke his cigarette.

You nodded and sat down away from him at the far side of the table, hoping that to do so wouldn't draw his ire.

Something told you that this was going to feel like a very long first day.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> More soon, if you'd like to continue to be verbally backhanded by a chain-smoking senior citizen who drinks his coffee with a hook.


	3. Toothpaste

Luke was already at home when you arrived there yourself, after completing your first day at your new job. You'd had to stay later with his dad that evening than you would have expected to normally: Not having had anybody to help him for a number of days prior to your arrival, both his home and he himself had needed a bit of extra maintenance before you could leave him to his own devices. 

"He asked me what my name was," you said as you walked in and started to slide your shoes off. You knew you sounded precisely as irritated as you felt.

"...What?" Luke had been sitting on the couch reading some sort of car magazine; he put it down at that point to look up at you. He appeared to be a bit confounded by your complaint.

"My name," you repeated. "He asked for my _name."_

"We've been living together for—"

"Three years!"

Luke sighed. "I'm sorry," he said. "I don't know why he'd—"

"It's because he doesn't like me," you interrupted, setting down your things and walking over to where your boyfriend was seated. "He's _never_ liked me, and I've always known it. I don't even know why he agreed to try this— unless it's just because he thinks it's fun to piss me off." You hadn't betrayed even a hint of the way Anakin had made you feel while you'd been in his home; however, you had no problem expressing yourself to Luke. You'd never had a problem expressing yourself to Luke.

As you flopped down beside him, he turned himself to face you and look at you sympathetically. "I swear it's not you," he said. "I've told you a million times that he doesn't like anybody, haven't I? I'm sure he's not _trying_ to upset you. Maybe... I don't know, maybe he really did forget. He _is_ getting older now, and—"

"He did _not_ forget," you told him pointedly, unable to stop yourself from glaring at the far wall.

Luke folded his hands contritely in his lap, and stared down at them for a few long, quiet moments— maybe because he knew you were right. Finally, though, he did turn his gaze back toward you. "I'm sorry," he said. "If he's really making you miserable, you don't actually _have_ to do this. I just thought..." He trailed off, and then he sighed again.

Now you felt guilty for being upset. "I'm not _miserable,"_ you assured him, "and I'm also not going to give up after just one day. I know how much you love your dad, and anyway, I looked through the paperwork you left for me— you weren't wrong about Veteran's Affairs making it worth my while." 

Hearing you say that seemed to make him half-smile, at least. "Told you," he said. "...He wasn't really terrible _all_ day, was he?"

"No," you admitted, "he wasn't." Then, with a chuckle, "Just for _most_ of it."

Luke laughed back, but he also jabbed you in the ribs with his elbow. "You have a bit of an attitude too, you know. It kind of makes sense that you'd butt heads with him, don't you think?"

You turned in your seat to face him. "An 'attitude'?" 

With a wry smile and a nod, he answered, "Yep— an attitude."

The look on his face made it easy, at least for the moment, to forget about what a jerk his dad had been all day long. You stared at him for a few moments— he was too cute for his own good sometimes. All at once, you rolled out of your seated position and moved to straddle his lap with your knees. Slipping one hand up the front of his shirt and placing the other on the side of his face, you asked him, "You _like_ my 'attitude', though— don't you?"

"If I didn't like it, I wouldn't still be here, would I?" he grinned. Then, he tilted his head to kiss your palm and proposed, "Why don't you show me some of your attitude right now, and I'll tell you all about whether I like it or not?"

"Gladly," you said, and you raked your nails gently over the lithe smoothness of his chest with the hand you'd snaked up beneath his shirt. Stroking his face with the thumb of the other, you leaned in to kiss him. He closed his eyes, moaned into you softly, and shifted his hips beneath you as he placed his own hands firmly on either side of your waist. 

Nothing made you feel better about a bad day at work than spending time with Luke... and you were glad to know that working for his father didn't seem to mean that would have to change.

...

"What the fuck is this?"

You took a deep breath before answering, because you weren't about to start speaking to your new client the way it seemed he liked to speak to you. Frankly, you'd never have accepted this sort of treatment from anyone else; however, this job was a little bit different from your last one. Anyway, it seemed that Luke had been right: You'd just been out shopping for groceries with Anakin on your second day together, and indeed, he had treated every single person to whom he'd had cause to speak during your trip as though they were absolute garbage. 

"What do you mean?" you asked, in your most deliberately measured tone of voice.

 _"This,"_ he said, holding up a tube of what appeared to you to be entirely normal toothpaste.

"It was on the list," you told him. "What's wrong with it?"

He made a big deal out of lifting it up to the light in the kitchen and reading from the package almost dramatically, "'Cinnamon'." Then, he looked at you. "It tastes like fucking _cinnamon."_

You didn't know quite what to say. "I— well... I'm sorry?" You supposed he didn't like cinnamon. Truthfully, he'd been stressing you out at the store to the point where you'd barely been looking at the toothpaste. You'd just grabbed one at random in the interest of getting in and out as quickly as possible. You supposed, now, that you'd made a mistake. "I'll pick up a different one on my way here tomorrow," you offered, which if nothing else would ensure that you were not too early for Anakin's tastes.

"So tonight," he said, "right before I go to fucking sleep, I'll get a mouthful of goddamn _cinnamon."_ He said this as though it were an unforgivable travesty.

 _Better than the taste of half a pack of cigarettes,_ you thought to yourself, but you definitely didn't say that out loud. Instead you told him, "I can take it back and exchange it for a different one right now, if that's what you want."

"You mean a _normal_ one," he corrected you, which you certainly didn't appreciate. After that, he sighed and proceeded to sit down at the kitchen table, where he retrieved a cigarette from the pack he always kept there, and then a match from the bowl to light it with. Once he'd ignited it, he inhaled deeply as he closed his eyes and shook his head.

You weren't quite sure what to say. Luke and his sister had already told you that their father's need for full-time support was relatively new; it was supposedly only with age that he had become more prone to things like infections, fatigue, respiratory challenges, and phantom pains. You realized that it would be prudent to try to empathize with him: How would you have felt if you'd made great strides as a person missing all four of their limbs, only to have some of that progress stolen away by something as inevitable as time? You'd been under the impression that he used to do most things entirely independently; things like driving and bathing, and even running, at one point. Now that his ability to do those sorts of things for himself was diminishing, it made perfect sense that he'd be unhappy.

"Well," you said in a tone of voice whose kindness you hoped was tangible, "does that mean I should go back to the store, then?"

"No," he answered, shaking his head. "Just fucking forget about it." He wasn't looking at you; he seemed not to like to do that. When he was seated at his kitchen table, he tended mostly to stare straight ahead of himself, in the direction of the wall. When he did it for long enough, it felt almost as though he wasn't in the room at all.

"Alright," you told him, already having decided that you were more likely than not going to stop somewhere in the morning and get him his 'normal' toothpaste. You didn't have a reason not to; anyway, it technically was your fault that he was stuck with the cinnamon stuff. "Do you want to do laundry next, or are you up for some physio?"

"I want to smoke a cigarette," he said, with no intonation whatsoever.

"I mean after your smoke."

"Fuck. Laundry, I guess."

"Do you want me to go to your bedroom and—"

"I'll do it," he interrupted, because he already knew you were offering to go and gather up his clothes for him.

"Okay." You picked up the last bag of groceries from the floor and started to unpack it, placing its contents onto the table. As you did, you made an attempt at conversation: "Luke says you started teaching him how to fix cars when he was little."

"All I ever did was stand behind him and tell him what to do," said Anakin.

"Well, he's really good at it. His boss says—"

_"I want to smoke a fucking cigarette."_

"...Okay."

Maybe he was still just upset about the toothpaste.

...

"What was your dad like when you and Leia were growing up?"

"Huh?" Luke looked up from what he'd been doing with the ground meat you'd set out to thaw in the fridge before either of you had left for work that morning. The two of you were standing side-by-side at the counter in your little kitchen, getting dinner ready.

"Your dad," you repeated for him. "What was he like when you guys were little?"

"I don't know," mused Luke, dumping a small plate of finely-minced onions into the bowl of what would soon be your dinner. "Kind of serious, I guess." With a small laugh, he added, "I think he was afraid we wouldn't listen to him once we got older if he wasn't really stern with us."

That made sense— after a certain age, you supposed it would have been impossible for Anakin to physically force the twins to do much of anything.

"Now," Luke continued, "I think you might get a different answer if you asked my sister."

"Why's that?" You were peeling carrots with the intention of steaming them; they weren't just the orange kind— some of them were white, and a few others were a regal shade of purple. Except for being a bit milder, they didn't taste much different from the orange ones; however, you liked the way they looked all mixed together on your plate.

Luke scoffed (maybe unintentionally), and reached for a shaker full of garlic salt as he answered, "He went a lot easier on her than he did on me."

You couldn't help but chuckle. "That can't be true," you said. Leia was more assertive than Luke; you'd have figured that if their father was going to be harder on one of them than the other, it would have been her.

"Trust me, it's true— he always used to tell Leia how much she looked like our mom. It wasn't a big secret that he missed her; I think that made it harder for him to be strict with my sister." Next, he reached for pepper. Luke liked to use a lot of pepper.

"Oh. Your mom died before he came home from Iraq, right?"

Luke nodded. "Right after we were born, basically. I think she got an infection in the hospital, but I'm not really sure." It was difficult to read him right then; you wondered if you shouldn't have asked for confirmation as to the timing of her death.

"I'm sorry," you said, in case you'd upset him.

"You don't need to be," he told you, looking up from what he was doing to offer you a smile. "I never knew her, so I'd be lying if I said I missed her. It was always just us and our dad; that's all I ever knew."

"Did he have a lot of help with you guys?" You were curious— you could hardly imagine a man with no limbs raising two active kids all by himself, no matter how independent or capable he happened to be.

"A little, I guess. My mom's parents helped a bit, but they lived pretty far away." He seemed to think for a moment. "Our uncle helped out too, though, and he lived right around the corner."

"You mean your uncle Ben?" Luke had always spoken fondly of him; however, he himself had died not long before you two had found one another. You never did get to meet him. Since the carrots had all been peeled by that point, you reached for a knife and began to chop them up.

"Yeah. He was pretty cool— he wasn't really our uncle, though; he was a guy dad knew from the army." He'd started to mix the meat and spices up with his hands by now.

"They must have been close," you observed, picking up handfuls of chopped carrots and dropping them into your makeshift steamer (it was a little tinfoil 'basket' suspended above a small amount of water inside of a large pot).

"They were— I wish you could have met him. My dad took it pretty hard when he died." He stopped what he was doing, and paused once again as though he were considering something. "...He was still helping my dad with stuff even after Leia and I moved out, actually."

"So it was only after your uncle died that your dad started needing to hire help?" you asked.

"Come to think of it, yeah," Luke said, as though he'd just had a revelation. He shook his head after that as though dismissing a thought, and then he asked you to turn on the water in the sink so he could rinse his hands without getting raw meat on the taps.

While you did, you couldn't help wondering if you hadn't just accidentally acquired a better understanding of your new client than you'd had before.


	4. Onions

"What the fuck is that?"

In the time you'd thus far spent working with Luke's dad, you'd come to learn that 'what the fuck', 'why the fuck', 'where the fuck', and 'how the fuck' were his favourite ways to begin any questions he happened to pose— to you, and just about everyone else, too. It had bothered you at first, but you were beginning to learn not to take his crudeness personally. The language he used to speak to you didn't actually seem to have much of anything to do with you at all; anyway, to be upset about it would have been a waste of time and energy. 

"It's going to be a meatloaf," you said coolly. You were standing in Anakin's kitchen this time, mixing up a bowl of ground meat the same way Luke usually would have done for the two of you at home. He'd said his dad liked his meatloaf, and that's why you'd elected to make it for him today. Cooking, for Anakin, typically meant sliding something frozen into the oven, turning it up to 400 degrees or so, and gauging whether or not it was done by the number of cigarettes he went through while he waited to be able to smell it. You'd thought (perhaps incorrectly) that this would be bit nicer for him than that.

"Why the fuck are there onions in it?" He stepped up behind you, and looked over your shoulder. When you peered back at him, you couldn't help noticing that he didn't exactly look thrilled by your effort.

"Because that's how Luke makes it. He says you like it this way."

"Oh." He took a drag of the cigarette he happened to be pinching between two of the robotic fingers of his right hand; blew it out straight over your head.

 _"Do_ you like it this way?" you asked, because something told you he had a bit more to say about the recipe than that. You always had to ask Anakin, if you wanted him to provide you with additional information about much of anything at all. So far, you'd found that he never, _ever_ volunteered any more than what he thought was absolutely necessary.

"It's fine," was— of course— all he said. He didn't move from where he was standing. 

"...You can sit down if you want," you told him. "You should take your legs off for a bit anyway; I'm supposed to put the antibiotic on your knees today, aren't I?"

"It can wait," he told you, but he went off to plant himself at his spot at the kitchen table anyway.

The skin on what remained of Anakin's legs was almost always irritated from sheer overuse of his prostheses; after applying the antibiotic cream to it, he had to go without walking for an hour or two, at the very least. You'd been working with him for a little more than a month by this point, and if you'd learned anything about him in that time besides the way he liked (or didn't like) to talk, it was that he absolutely hated having to take off his various removable parts. 

"It can't wait _too_ long," you pointed out. It was four in the afternoon now; you would be leaving in an hour and a half. 

"Let me finish my smoke first," he said, staring at the far wall the same way he always did.

"Okay. We'll get started once this is in the oven. You want to do it here, or in the living room?"

"Living room."

"Okay."

...

"This looks a lot better today," you said, as you knelt between his legs to apply the medicine to what remained of them. The meatloaf was cooking, and you were both in Anakin's living room. He was seated comfortably (you hoped he was comfortable, anyway) on the sofa; his legs were detached, and leaning up against the arm of the couch.

"No it doesn't," he scoffed, looking down at you as though you'd just said something stupendously dumb.

You tried not to sigh as you slathered a thick, translucent paste over the mottled, reddened skin of his right leg and carefully spread it around. After a brief moment of consideration, you told him, "I'm trying to be encouraging— positive." You were; you always were. Most of your clients at your previous job had appreciated it, or had at least done you the favour of ignoring it if they didn't.

"Well," he said, "do you think you could knock it the fuck off?" He looked up again, past you and at the television mounted to the wall in front of the sofa. It's volume was turned down so low that the speech was almost indiscernible, but it was tuned to a news network. Anakin seemed to hate the news, but he always watched it anyway.

You weren't sure what to say, so you started on his other leg. It was in just about the same condition as the one you'd already treated. Eventually, "...I'm sorry. I'm just trying to help, you know." Anakin was constantly in a bad mood, or that was what it seemed like to you. You wanted him to feel better; not just for his own sake, but because it might make life a bit easier for you, too— not to mention for his kids. Luke in particular was always worrying about him, no doubt in part because of his unflinchingly sour disposition. You couldn't help but reflect, briefly, that his inner tension seemed to manifest itself physically, too: The muscles in his thighs were as hard as rocks; stubborn, like the rest of him.

"If I want any more help than what you're paid to give me, I'll let you know," he said, unknowingly confirming your evaluation of his demeanour. 

You went quiet for a few moments after that, but soon you couldn't help but tell him, "Your kids worry about you."

"They shouldn't," he replied flatly, still staring at the news.

"I don't think they know that." You finished up with his leg, and wiped your hands with a piece of wet paper towel you'd brought out to the living room with you for that express purpose. This time he was the one who went quiet. When he stayed that way, you got up from the floor and sat down next to him on the sofa, still holding the paper towel in your lap. "Luke told me you were pretty stern with them when they were growing up, but—" 

"What the fuck was I supposed to do?" he interrupted. His intonation was jarringly defensive, and he finally glanced over at your face. Anakin more than looked his age at the best of times, but it was especially evident when he was acutely upset: Every line on his face seemed to deepen; somehow, even the salty streaks of grey sneaking their way into his dusty amber hair looked more prominent. "They'd never have listened to me if I hadn't been a fucking asshole. Do you really think—"

"Hey— stop, you didn't let me finish." You were taken aback somewhat by his vehemence (although rude, Anakin was rarely ever ardent, at least as far as you knew), but you kept your voice measured anyhow. "Luke didn't say you were an 'asshole'." You paused. "...He _did_ say that things were easier for you before his uncle died." 

You supposed you were taking a chance by bringing that up, but again, you wanted Anakin to feel better. Maybe he'd appreciate a chance to tell you something about a person who'd meant a lot to him; about a person who used to make his life more tolerable. Maybe, if you were lucky, you could even infer some tips from whatever he had to say— Anakin never did let you know whether or not he thought you were doing a decent job of helping him out.

All he said, however, was, "Luke is probably right." He looked back at the television, and shifted uncomfortably on the sofa. "Things were better with Ben around."

Since he appeared to be even more disquieted than he usually was, you told him as gently as you could, "I'm sorry you lost your friend."

"I am too."

"It's not easy to lose someone," you offered, "but—"

"Stop." 

"All I mean is that—"

_"Stop."_

You stopped. If he didn't want to talk about his loss, then that was up to him. You still wished he'd let you get to know him a bit better; thought it might benefit you both. Changing the subject, "Should I tell Luke you don't like onions in meatloaf?"

He sighed and shook his head, still without turning his gaze back in your direction. If you hadn't known better, you'd have thought you saw a smile pulling at the edge of his mouth— had you ever seen him smile? You couldn't recall. "No," he said. "Don't tell Luke. He's been doing it that way since he was a kid; it would hurt his feelings."

You did smile at that. "Alright. I won't."

You watched the news with him in silence until the meatloaf was finished. After that, you offered him help putting his legs back on (he refused it), and left gratefully for home.

...

"You _do_ know how much I love you, right?"

You laughed, and pulled Luke down so that your body was pressed right up against his. The two of you were in bed together; he'd been suspending himself above you with his arms before you'd thrown him off-balance by drawing him in. Your day with his dad hadn't exactly been a walk in the park, but you were sure his had been just as hard: Broken cars could be as fickle as ornery old men, from the way he sometimes described it. 

"Of course I know you love me," you confirmed for him. "You know I love you too, don't you?" After smiling broadly at him, you craned upward to steal a kiss as you ran your fingertips up and down his back. You loved the way his skin felt. He might have had a mechanic's hands, but his body was like a dancer's: He was slight but strong; smooth and solid all over, with a head of hair you knew you'd never tire of combing your fingers through.

"You'd better love me," he said, shooting you one of his very best smiles as he pushed an especially hard part of himself into your thigh. "If you don't, I'm kind of screwed, aren't I?"

"What are you talking about?" you scoffed. "You'd be just fine without me." Luke tended toward being slightly clingy, although that had never bothered you— sometimes you were even a little bit the same way. Still, sometimes he'd imply that he didn't have much confidence in his ability to manage things in your absence, which always made you want to shake your head at him. Maybe it was the way he'd been brought up; maybe it was just the way he was, but Luke was incredibly capable, and you never passed up an opportunity to remind him of it.

"No, I mean it," he chuckled. "I really don't know what I'd do without you."

"You'd do exactly what you do now, except without me bugging you all the time." You grinned, and then you dug your nails into him as you started to nip at his neck. He loved that; he always had. 

_"Ah!_ You don't 'bug' me. You help me pay for our crappy apartment, you put up with the way I smell when I come home from work, you cook with me— and you even tolerate my weird family." You knew very well that he meant Anakin... who, you'd discovered from spending eight- and nine-hour days with him, certainly did err on the side of 'weird', whether you'd have admitted it to either of his kids or not.

"It's all part of having a life with you," you said, forgoing your scratching in favour of squeezing him tightly. "And for what it's worth, I _love_ the way you smell when you come home from work." You did— there wasn't a company you could think of which produced motor-oil scented cologne, but Luke sometimes made you think that maybe there should have been.

This time he was the one who laughed at you. "That explains how you deal with my dad," he said. "You're weird, too."

"If you start talking about your dad in bed again, I'm going to bite something right off of you," you threatened playfully, and craned upward once more. It was his earlobe you caught with your teeth this time.

"Ow! Okay! Sorry!" He used one of his hands to touch your face once you'd pulled away from his ear. His voice softened as he told you, "I just want to make sure you know how much you mean to me— do you understand?"

"I understand," you said, "and you mean just as much to me."

You stopped talking after that; about Luke's dad, and everything else too. You two had always been able to communicate quite effectively without words, and so right now you did just that. You loved him just as much as you liked to tell him you did, and there wasn't much you weren't willing to 'put up' with for the sake of being with him.

He didn't need to say anything for you to know he felt just the same way.


	5. Technical Experience

"You okay in there?" 

You were standing just outside the door to Anakin's bathroom. It was located toward the back of the single-story house, close to where he slept. He was in the shower, and you— as always— were ready to assist him if the need arose. He'd been quiet for a while after you'd heard the water turn off, so you figured you'd ask and make sure everything was alright.

"I'm fucking fine," he answered sternly through the door. "You think I've never done this without you before?"

"I think it's a bit easier for you when you let me help you out," you called back, because you knew that he knew you were right. You might not have been one another's preferred company, but you'd certainly grown used to each other in the time since you'd started to work with him.

"Give me a minute," was all he said, and so you resumed waiting, newly confident that he was, in fact, okay in there. 

To get into the shower, for Anakin, took some level of both persistence and patience. First, you'd help him apply an air-tight cover to each of his legs up to his mid-thigh, because he preferred not to sit. The covers were long, sheath-like, and made of plasticized rubber; you would vacuum the air out of them with a tiny pump he owned specifically for that purpose, completing the seal. After that, one of you would remove his advanced myoelectric right arm and hand, leaving him with just the hook-like appendage he wore on his left. That arm you would cover with a sheath similar to the ones he used on his legs, because wearing it enabled him to hold soap and shampoo and whatever else he happened to need while he was washing. 

Following his shower, he'd sit down on the edge of his bed in a pair of boxers and a t-shirt, and you would take off both the sheaths and the prostheses beneath them for the purpose of helping him clean and dry what remained of his natural limbs. Then, you would usually put his right arm back on so that he could smoke a cigarette while you applied his antibiotic cream to his skin. Sometimes you would trim his hair for him (he hated sitting in a barber's chair), and after that, he would often have you remove the right arm once again so that he could fall asleep for a bit while you cleaned up the house.

He'd told you before that he never, ever went to sleep absent all of his limbs; to do so would mean that he'd essentially be trapped in bed (and unable to smoke) until you or one of his kids next came to see him. At night, he tended to leave one of his arms on, because that way he could just about always manage to cobble himself the rest of the way together upon waking. When you were on-duty, though, he'd begun to feel enabled to take everything off altogether and rest more comfortably, without worrying about whether or not he'd roll over on a part of himself which happened to be made of plastic or metal. 

_Do you know how much I hate having people see me like this?_ was what he'd said to you the very first time he'd let you take him all of the way apart, surprising you with his candidness.

 _You look just fine to me,_ you had told him, as you'd pulled a blanket up over his shoulders, and left him to sleep so you could go off and start his laundry. Even you had expected to be jarred by his natural appearance, but as it turned out, you weren't: He was the same person he always seemed to be, regardless of what devices he did or didn't happen to have applied to his body. The only difference, perhaps, was that he seemed a bit less imposing with no arms or legs than he did when he was wearing them... and if anything, that was somewhat of a relief.

A sudden noise pulled you out of your own head— it was Anakin, and he'd started coughing from behind the door. He coughed a lot; from what you knew of his lung function, it was spotty at best. Part of the reason he needed your help in the first place was that things which used to be simple and easy now seemed to take the wind right out of him. Usually showering wasn't one of those things, but you supposed that today it was.

"Anakin?" you asked, and when you didn't get an answer, you decided it was probably a better idea to spring into action than to worry about whether he'd be pissed off at you for walking in on him. He'd left his inhaler (it delivered a measured dose of steroids to his lungs whenever he came in need of assistance with his breathing) on a small table in the hallway, so you took it in your hand and pushed open the door to a burst of fragrant steam.

Right away, you were glad you had: Presently he was doubled-over in front of the bathroom counter, gasping for breath. You walked up swiftly beside him, announced your presence, and placed a hand on his back to encourage him to stand up straight. When you found that he couldn't, you ventured to guide him over to the toilet and sit him down on the closed lid. Once he was situated there, you held the mouthpiece of the inhaler up to his lips and— when you were sure he'd sealed his mouth around it— pressed down on the little plunger to administer the medication. 

With a laboured wheeze, he took it in; held his breath for a moment. When he began to recover, you asked him if he needed another, because sometimes one was enough, and sometimes it wasn't. When he nodded emphatically, you repeated the action, and by the time he'd exhaled following the second dose, he had mostly recovered from his coughing fit.

Before long, he looked up at you, and— after thanking you somewhat begrudgingly— he asked in the same tone of voice he just about always used with you, "Could you _please_ get out of here now, so I can put something on?"

You nodded, and stepped back into the hallway, closing the door behind you. You'd seen just about every client you'd ever worked with in varying states of undress; for you, it was never awkward— but you could certainly empathize with Anakin's sentiment. You were still relatively new to working with him; on top of that, you also happened to be his son's girlfriend. Besides, his torso had been heavily scarred by the bomb blast which had caused him to lose his limbs in the first place, and you knew enough about him by now to know that his scars were something he preferred to keep to himself.

Maybe that was why he felt the need to apologize when he finally exited the bathroom. He'd removed the cover from his hook-ended left arm (he could do that with his teeth, which impressed you, although of course you hadn't said anything about it), and dressed himself in a loose t-shirt coupled with a pair of characteristically plain boxer shorts. 

"Let's get the rest of this shit over with," he said flatly, and he nudged his way past you to get to his bedroom. You followed the crinkle of his leg covers down the hall, with his inhaler still clasped firmly in your hand.

...

"What'd your dad do while he was in the army, anyway?" you asked over the noise of the vacuum as you ran it down the length of the perpetually-closed drapes in Anakin's living room.

"Mostly he flew helicopters," answered Leia, making a face at the contents of the overfilled ashtray she'd just picked up from the coffee table and dumped into a wastebasket she was holding in her opposite hand. She'd stopped by not long after Anakin had finished with his shower; he was asleep in bed now. He'd told you explicitly that the vacuum wouldn't bother him, and so you figured you'd go ahead and get it done before he woke back up. He never slept for long in the afternoon; just long enough to make up for the rest he always complained about missing out on at night due to the necessity of sleeping with one of his arms.

"Wow," you said, as you turned the vacuum off and began to wrap up the cord. You didn't know much about the Gulf War, but you knew enough to understand that meant Leia's dad had probably helped to level more than a city or two during his time overseas. "You know, he's never mentioned any of it to me."

Leia laughed. "He doesn't mention anything to anyone, in case you hadn't noticed." She set the wastebasket down beside the coffee table, and went on to wipe the surface with a cloth she'd brought in from the kitchen. "He didn't tell me or Luke anything until we were old enough to ask about it; even then, he wasn't exactly forthcoming."

"I guess that makes sense," you said. You couldn't discern whether Anakin was proud of the time he'd spent as a soldier or not. From what Luke had told you, he'd been in the military for several years before getting blown apart— before his kids were born. What else had he done in that time, aside from blowing up targets and collecting intelligence? You didn't figure he was likely to ever tell you, but you were still curious. Carefully, you asked Leia next, "How did he lose his limbs disarming a bomb? Shouldn't he have been in the air?" 

Before she could answer you, your phone went off from inside your pocket. When you pulled it out to look at it, there was a text message Anakin had sent you from his bed, indicating that he was ready to put himself back together. Whenever he slept, he did so with his phone right beside his pillow; in the absence of any of his limbs, he could use a stylus he held in his mouth to tap out messages. He vastly preferred to do that than to shout for assistance, which you more than understood. "Your dad's ready to get up," you said. "I'll be back in a few minutes, okay?"

"I'll go and get him," offered Leia, to which you nodded and motioned for her to go ahead. Anakin would likely appreciate her help more than he tended to appreciate yours; anyway, she'd come here in the first place to see how he was doing— not answer your questions and help you empty out ashtrays.

While she was off at the other end of the house, you put away the vacuum and started to make coffee, which you knew Anakin would want soon after getting up. You checked the table to make sure his bowl of matches was replenished too, and to confirm that he still had at least a few cigarettes left in the pack that was sitting beside it. His favourite habit might not have been doing him any favours; however, your job was to make him comfortable, not urge him to give up things he liked. 

It was when the pot of coffee was about halfway through bring brewed that you finally heard Leia and her dad re-enter the room. Leia looked happy to have had the opportunity to retrieve him; Anakin himself looked groggy, but not quite so much as he tended to look when you first arrived in the mornings. Wordlessly, he sat down in his spot at the table, albeit not before glancing over at the countertop to ensure you'd remembered the coffee. He liked it strong; very strong, in fact— the scent of it was almost enough to mask the smell of the cigarette he predictably lit up just after taking his seat.

Leia sat down across from him; however, before she could say anything, Anakin turned his head toward you and said, "We were grounded that day because of the weather. I was the only person on the base with enough technical experience to try to take the goddamn thing apart. I got frustrated with it, and triggered it— it was my fault for not paying attention to what I was fucking doing."

It took you a moment to understand just what he was talking about; by the time you realized he must have heard your question to Leia from his room, you weren't quite sure what to say. You valued his willingness to go ahead and tell you a bit about how he'd acquired his injury. "Thanks," you said, "but it doesn't sound like it was your fau—"

"Trust me," he interrupted. "It was. If I hadn't been—"

 _"Dad,"_ said Leia. "There was nothing you could have done except what you were told to do, and so that was what you did." She gave you a look next; it wasn't an angry one, and it wasn't exactly pleading either, but it did tell you that she wished you would both drop the subject. Whether that was for her benefit or her father's, though, you couldn't quite tell.

Anakin shook his head and focused his gaze upon the end of his smoke, while you walked over to the sink to clean a pot you'd set to soak the night before. Leia tried to engage him by asking him what (if anything) he felt like doing over the weekend, but it only half-worked.

You weren't surprised, because he'd already said more of substance in the last few minutes than you were used to him saying throughout the course of an entire typical day.

Part of you couldn't help but wonder if you might not be able to coax him into replicating the feat, without upsetting him altogether too much. You still thought that this whole thing would be easier for the both of you if he'd let you get to know him just a little bit better. 

By the time you were finished at the sink, however, your mind had wandered to Luke, and the type of day he might have had at work: There was chicken waiting in the fridge, and he'd promised to teach you how to fry it to perfection once he got home, so long as his day hadn't been too rough.

Leia left once she'd shared a cup or two of that incredibly strong coffee with her father; they didn't say much to one another, but when it was time for her to go, he walked her to the door and sent her off with a kiss on the head. You thought that was sweet— especially considering his usual demeanour.

He must have noticed the smile he'd put on your face as he walked back into the room, because he rolled his eyes and shook his head again before lighting yet another cigarette, and asking if you planned on 'making' him go shopping that day.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hurt my neck this week, and writing seems to exacerbate it. :( 
> 
> Thanks for being here, if you're still here. :) In case you hadn't noticed, melancholy domesticity is definitely my jam.
> 
> There's a Native reserve near where I live that sells astonishingly cheap cigarettes and gasoline; every time I visit, there's at least one or two scrubs-clad PSWs in line with an armful of smokes. The things they do for their clients never ceases to amaze & impress me. ❤️


	6. Croquetas

_"Happy birthday, Luke!"_

_"Huh?"_

_"I said, 'happy birthday'! It is your birthday, isn't it?"_

_"Oh— yeah, I guess it is."_

...

Luke never really did much for his own birthday, unless you goaded him into something. He'd always seemed fairly indifferent toward it; indeed, when you'd woken him in the morning with a kiss and your well-wishes, he had seemed a bit confused at first. That was typical of him, though, and after registering the fact that it actually was his birthday, he'd appeared distinctly appreciative of your having remembered it. He'd sat up in bed, wrapped his arms around you, and returned your kiss; that had emboldened you to suggest that the two of you go somewhere nice for dinner after work that night. 

He'd agreed, because there was a new Spanish restaurant in town, and Spanish cuisine was something he had previously lamented not knowing how to make for himself. Luke never would have conceded to either of you paying good money for food you could cook at home— and anyway, he'd told you, ordering it might very well provide him an opportunity to deconstruct it. You hadn't exactly understood what he had meant the first time he'd told you that recipes and combustion engines weren't all that dissimilar from one another, but you supposed now that he wasn't necessarily wrong.

You were eagerly looking forward to your evening together; so much, in fact, that you were hardly paying attention to what you were doing right now... which might have been a mistake, because it caused you to steer your shopping cart full of Anakin's food and non-cinnamon toothpaste right into the corner of a shelf at the grocery store. 

"Shit!" you exclaimed, stopping to make sure you hadn't knocked anything over.

"Where the fuck is your head?" demanded Anakin, once you'd discerned that you hadn't, in fact, sent anything flying from the shelf into which you'd rammed your cart. 

"Sorry," you told him, dragging yourself back into your current reality. "The eggs didn't break, did they?"

"I don't fucking care," he huffed, and he must really not have, because he didn't bother to check. He'd been this way all day long— if Anakin's mood was usually bad, then today it was downright atrocious. You didn't know what the problem was because he hadn't told you, but he'd been even more abrupt with you than was typical since you'd arrived at his house that morning. For as contrary as he was acting, you might have guessed he was four years old if he hadn't so very obviously been in his sixties.

Ignoring what he'd said about the eggs, you went ahead and checked for yourself. After confirming that they were all still intact, you looked back over at him and asked, "Can you think of anything else you need?" You'd already picked up everything that had been on his list, as far as you knew. 

"No," he said decidedly, as he looked around himself. "Can we leave, now?" His tone of voice indicated to you that he'd have loved to have a cigarette right about then, but even Anakin was not ostentatious enough to light one up in the middle of the store.

With a sigh you answered, "Sure— just as soon as we pay. Do you want to leave ahead of me and wait in the car, or...?"

"Fuck off," he spat at you, which was enough to take you aback in spite of your being more than used to his regular disposition by now. "You're not going to get rid of me that fucking easily."

"I'm not trying to 'get rid of' you," you protested. "The lineup is long today, and I just thought you might be happier if you—"

 _"Come on,"_ he urged, disregarding you as he began to walk ahead of the cart to the cash registers. With a shake of your head, you followed him. 

You weren't about to say so out loud, but on this day in particular, you were looking forward to getting the hell out of the store just as much as he was.

...

"You could have been a bit more polite to the lady at the check-out counter," you chastised Anakin on your way back to the car. Normally you wouldn't have bothered, but he'd treated her even more poorly than he had the last time you'd come here, and aside from feeling bad for her, you were embarrassed by your client's behaviour. 

"She asks about those stupid goddamn rewards cards every single time. I don't have one, and I don't fucking want one." He was staring straight ahead of himself, smoking what must have felt to him like a long-awaited cigarette.

"It's her _job_ to ask," you reminded him, as you stopped where you'd backed your car up to the curb, and opened the trunk to begin loading the groceries. You'd parked very close to the entrance of the store; Anakin just so happened to have a handicap parking pass. You'd stick it atop your dashboard when you went out just about anywhere with him, in the interest of making his life a little bit easier— not that he ever seemed to care. 

"It's her job not to piss off her customers," he grumbled, standing beside the car while you began to put the bags into the back of it.

You were about to say something in response to that, but instead you ended up being very suddenly interrupted by a voice— a voice belonging to a young man who, if you had to guess, must have been in an even worse mood than Anakin that day.

"Hey, you dumb bitch!" he shouted, to both your shock and dismay. "What the fuck do you think you're doing with your car parked in the handicap spot?"

Spinning around to look at him, you started to explain, "The pass is in the window. I'm here with—"

"You don't look very fucking disabled to me," he interrupted, stepping up a bit too closely for your comfort. "People like you make me fucking sick. The next time my fucking grandma can't find a goddamn space, I'll know it's because some asshole like you—"

 _"Would you shut your fucking mouth already?"_ Anakin had been standing on the other side of the car, and had likely been invisible to the man accusing you of being a 'dumb bitch' until he stepped into view. 

"Huh? Who the fuck are—"

"I'm the reason she's got the goddamn motherfucking pass in the first place, you piece of shit," he growled, handily exceeding the other man's level of profanity while he edged his way in between the two of you as swiftly as his legs would allow. For good measure, he reached out with his left hand (the one that didn't even resemble a hand all) and jabbed the guy in the chest sharply with his hook. 

Your accuser seemed appropriately jarred. After looking Anakin up-and-down (aside from his hands, his legs were clearly visible from beneath the cuffs of his shorts), he appeared to start to apologize; however, he wasn't granted the opportunity.

"Do you know how fucking long I've _had_ that pass?" Anakin shouted at him, daring to give him another shove before blowing a thick plume of smoke out into his face. "More than half my goddamn life— and I sure as fuck don't appreciate a little dickwad like you giving the person who got stuck with the job of helping me a hard fucking time!" 

"I'm sorry, I didn't— I mean, it didn't look like—"

 _"Fuck off!"_ he yelled, making certain that he was close enough when he did to render the man just as uncomfortable as he'd initially rendered you.

By that point, you had stepped away to the side; you didn't know what to say or do. You'd never seen Anakin act so aggressively before— he seemed to be less interested in procuring an apology than he was in simply scaring the guy away... which was just fine, of course; you wanted him to leave more than you wanted to listen to him stammer that he was sorry. The way Anakin was going about casting him off, however, was disquieting to say the least.

Nevertheless, it worked; the man retreated without another word, and you were left standing at the curb, staring in bewilderment in his direction. When you did finally glance back over at Anakin, you witnessed him make an attempt at enjoying the last of his cigarette, only to descend into a coughing fit. His inhaler was sitting on the front seat of the car, but when you moved to retrieve it for him, he only waved you off in favour of guiding his own body unsteadily into the passenger's seat. Once there, he picked the device up in his right hand, wrenched the cap off unceremoniously with his teeth, and administered the medication himself.

Once you were satisfied that he was going to be alright, you resumed loading the groceries and returned the cart; after that, you joined him in the vehicle. 

"Thanks for doing what you did outside the store," you said, once you were out of the parking lot and back on the road. Anakin had been silent since recovering from his cough. He tended toward staring blankly ahead of himself when he wasn't otherwise occupied, and that was precisely what he was doing right now.

"I hate people like that," he answered, which you didn't dare point out was somewhat ironic.

"Do you want to go and grab a coffee or something, or do you just want to go home?" you asked. 

"There's coffee in the trunk, isn't there?" 

"Sure, but I figured—"

"Home, then."

You nodded, and continued driving in the direction of his house. You were quiet for a few minutes before venturing to mention, "Did you remember it's your kids' birthday today? Luke and I are going—"

 _"I remembered,"_ he said, and by now he was beginning to sound distinctly fed-up with you. 

"Well, were you planning on doing anything for—"

"Birthdays are for children," he snapped, looking over at you briefly to drive his point home. "I did the fucking hats and the fucking parties, and the piñatas and the stupid loot bags. I let their goddamn friends come over to watch movies and fucking gawk at me, and I took them to fucking mini-golf. They're grown up now, and they can do whatever the fuck they want on their damn birthday. _Do you understand?"_

You were even more taken aback by his little tirade than you'd been by his telling you to fuck off in the store, or by his response to the man who'd thought you were unjustly occupying the handicap parking spot. "I'm sorry," you said quietly, not wanting to try your luck by adding anything else.

A few more minutes passed; finally, as you began to approach the house, Anakin requested of you with an intonation that could only have been described as contrite, "...Please don't tell either of them I said any of that."

You wouldn't have dreamed of doing so. "I won't— I still haven't told Luke about the onions," you assured him. "But if something in particular is bothering you today, I—"

"Just leave it," he told you, and it sounded very much as though he might be on the verge of pleading. 

"Alright," you said, and you tried to offer him a smile as you pulled into his driveway.

He didn't see it, because before the car had even settled in its space, he had already unclipped his seatbelt, opened up the door, and started for the house. 

By the time you got inside with the groceries, there was no sign of him save for the scent of fresh cigarette smoke wafting down the hallway from beneath his closed bedroom door. Frustrated, you thought about all of the different things you were still supposed to do with him that day before opting to give him the space he seemed to need, at least for a little while.

...

"This doesn't seem like it would be so hard to pull off," murmured Luke, leaning in to examine a plate of fragrant rice topped with green onions, mussels, shrimp, and baby squid. "The salted fried peppers seem like they'd be pretty easy, too. But I still don't think I could manage the— um, what were the little things with the breadcrumbs called?"

"Croquetas," you told him, with a smile and a sip of sherry. The ones you'd ordered earlier had been made from béchamel sauce and ham, but the menu had also offered a version with cod.

"Yeah, those! If we _did_ try those at home I'd probably want to use fish— my sister and my dad both hate fish; I only ever used to eat it when neither of them were in the house."

You laughed, and put down your glass. You and Luke were nestled together on the same side of a small booth in the restaurant you'd talked about early that morning. It was just as nice as you'd hoped it would be; the dining room was small and intimate with a lovely ambiance, and the food itself was both fascinating and delicious. You'd been here for a little while now, and as you had expected, Luke was enthusiastically deconstructing and examining everything you'd ventured to try. You loved that his passion for building things drew him to the art of cooking as much as it seemed to draw him to the art of fixing cars. 

"Isn't your dad pretty much _always_ in the house?" you chuckled, reaching over to pluck a shrimp from off the top of the dish Luke had been studying.

"He used to leave sometimes to go hang out with my uncle," he told you. "That's when I used to bake salmon in the oven— but he'd always be pissed off about the smell when he came home." He grinned as he shared that last bit of information; he'd had a fair amount of sherry since sitting down too, and it was clear that he was starting to feel its effects just as much as you were. He paused for a moment after that anyhow, appearing to contemplate something. "...How _was_ my dad today, anyway?" he asked, jabbing his own fork into one of the tiny squids atop the bed of rice.

Your own smile faded as you chewed your shrimp, and thought back to the nature of your interactions with Anakin that day. "He was... okay," you said, not without a heavy, unintentional note of disingenuousness.

"He was a dick, wasn't he?" asked Luke, speaking a bit more plainly than he might have, had it not been for the sherry.

"He wasn't a _dick,"_ you started, before very quickly realizing that you didn't know how to finish your sentence.

Before you could figure it out, though, Luke was already apologizing. "I'm sorry— I had a feeling he was going to have a bad day; I should have warned you about it before you left."

You thought for a moment before asking, "...Do you know what the problem was? He wouldn't tell me a thing, but he made it pretty obvious that he wasn't happy. I figured he'd be in a better mood on his kids' birthday."

Luke took some more sherry, and gave his head a shake. "Our birthday is the same day he lost my mom— he was still in the hospital himself when it happened; he didn't get to say goodbye, and I know that's always eaten him up. He was pretty good at faking his way through it when we were younger, but by the time we got to high school, he was pretty much done putting on a happy face."

Quite suddenly, you found yourself feeling both guilty for not recognizing why Anakin had been in especially low spirits that day, and a bit angry at his seeming inability to fake a smile for one day out of the entire year for the sake of his kids. Even if they were grown up now, you didn't think that absolved him entirely of his responsibility to try for them. "I'm sorry," you said. "I should have realized—"

"Don't worry about it. Leia and I are both used to it; anyway, this is turning out to be the best birthday I've had in a while." He set down both his utensil and his drink in favour of putting his arm around you. Drawing you in so he could kiss the side of your face, he said into your ear, "Thank you for remembering— I might not even have thought of it myself, if it hadn't been for you."

"I wasn't about to forget," you smiled back, and after returning a bit of his affection, the two of you forgot about Anakin for a while, and went back to your meal. 

You were glad you'd taken a cab to get here, because you were very quickly realizing that the sherry had left you in no condition to drive.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you, if you're still here for this weird little story.
> 
> I'll update some of the things I'm behind on soon, too; sorry if you were hoping for chapter 4 of Little Box instead of this. :x


	7. Resistance Bands

"It's here!" shouted Luke. _"It's here!_ I didn't think it would show up until tonight!"

"...Hm? What? What's 'here'?"

You'd just woken up to the sound of Luke's excitement. It was the morning after his birthday, and your head hurt— you supposed you'd had a bit too much to drink at the restaurant the night before. It was also a weekday, and you had to go off to Anakin's house shortly; still, you couldn't bring yourself to regret the way you'd celebrated with Luke. Dinner had been lovely, and even the drive home together in the back of the taxi you'd called had been lots of fun. 

He'd fallen into bed with you almost immediately upon arriving home, and together you had finished off the evening in a sublimely satisfying fashion. Both of you had almost certainly been less-than-graceful due to your tipsiness (come to think of it, you could distinctly remember having bumped your head against the frame of the bed at one point), but if anything, your lack of restraint had only served to make the entire experience that much more enjoyable. 

To be perfectly frank, you'd _always_ enjoyed having drunk sex with Luke; however, last night had been something else entirely. Despite your headache and your grogginess, you were glad you'd been able to help turn his birthday into something he could really enjoy. Even if his dad didn't have it in him to do it anymore, you guessed that Luke's status as an adult who could do whatever he wanted with his special day did have its advantages.

Once you'd thrown on something to wear (you were even in a good enough mood to completely ignore the ever-expanding crack in the wall beside the closet), you joined Luke in the living room, where he was putting on his shoes with a broad grin plastered on his face. He'd sat bolt-upright in bed only minutes before at the sound of _something_ outside, and as soon as he'd peered out the window, he had hastily dressed himself and started to shout happily. You had no idea he'd been expecting anything— maybe, you thought, he'd ordered something for himself for his birthday ahead of time, and it was only arriving now. Whatever it was, you found yourself feeling proud of him for taking his own happiness into account for once: For as hard as he worked and as frequently as he worried about his dad, he didn't often give himself the opportunity for much in the way of meaningful gratification.

"What is it?" you asked, as he stood up straight and started to turn the doorknob.

"Look out the window and you'll see," he told you. "I've been waiting for this for weeks!"

"You didn't tell me you had anything coming," you said, not that you were especially bothered by that fact. Luke could buy whatever he wanted; you more than trusted him not to go overboard— anyway, you knew him well enough to know that to do so wouldn't have been like him.

He laughed. "I'm pretty sure I told you last night, but I'm not surprised if you don't remember. Anyway, like I said, just go to the window— I'll get the guy to unload it where you can see it!"

"'Unload it'? Luke, how big is—"

"Just look!" he called, and at that he opened the door to a cool blast of early autumn air, running off to meet his delivery.

...

"Okay— _how_ much did you say it cost, again?" 

"It's an investment! Trust me, if I can fix it up the way I'm hoping, it'll—"

"So you're going to sell it?"

Luke looked down at his coffee. You were sitting across from one another at the table in your apartment's small kitchen; you were both late for work by this point, but after seeing what had just been delivered, you knew this conversation couldn't wait until later. Your head still hurt, but you trusted your own coffee to take care of that; anyway, your headache was now amongst the very least of your concerns. 

"Well," said Luke, glancing up at you, "I'm not actually sure about selling it yet— but I'm not lying about how much it'll be worth once I do some work on it! It was a bargain to begin with, and you have no idea how long I've wanted—"

 _"How much did it cost?"_

He might have been mostly staring into his coffee, but you had your eyes trained on him. You'd never have expected him to buy something like _this_ , least of all without talking to you about it first. You'd only begun working with his dad a couple of months ago; prior to that, you'd been unemployed for long enough that it had started to make you panic. 

Luke might have liked his job, and he might have worked hard at it too, but he didn't make the sort of money that would allow him to buy the kind of car that was now sitting downstairs. It was currently occupying an extra parking spot you'd have to pay for every month, and that was on top of the debt to the bank you were absolutely positive he'd racked up buying it in the first place. 

Just as you were about to press him on the price yet again, he muttered a number under his breath.

"Louder, please," you said, because you truly didn't think you could possibly have heard him correctly.

 _"Thirty thousand dollars,"_ he answered, this time with utmost clarity. He stood up from the table and turned away from you; that was how you knew he understood very well the sheer depth of the hole into which he'd just dug the two of you with his purchase.

"I thought we were trying to save money for—"

"A house! I know! I'm sorry!" He didn't turn back toward you. "You don't understand, though," he went on. "A 1969 Dodge Charger is worth twice that even if it doesn't work, and by the time I'm done with it, it'll—"

"You just _said_ you weren't sure about selling it! What the hell were you thinking when you signed the paperwork for that stupid thing?!" You got up, too, and walked over to where he was standing. When you placed a hand on his shoulder, however, he shrugged you right off.

"I don't feel like explaining this to you right now," he said abruptly, with a note of dismissiveness that only served to stoke your anger. "I'm already late for work; we can talk about it when I come home. Anyway, don't you think my dad is wondering where you are just about now?"

You didn't appreciate his deflection even a little bit. "I don't think he gives any more of a shit about me than it seems like you do," you told him, but he had already walked away from you and begun to zip up the backpack he kept by the door. He packed his lunch in it and took it to work every day; he'd always told you he did that because it was cheaper than buying food from the coffee truck that stopped by his shop every morning. You still couldn't imagine what the hell he'd been thinking when he had essentially signed all of your money away.

"You're just mad because you don't remember me telling you about it last night," he huffed, and before you could say anything back, he'd left the apartment, slamming the door behind him.

Now that you were standing in the kitchen alone, you were very nearly overcome by an urge to kick a handle off of one of the cupboard doors; however, since that would only have generated another bill you'd have to help pay, you restrained yourself.

Anyway, Luke had more likely than not been half-right about at least one thing: You could already hear his dad in your head, asking you 'where the fuck' you'd been as though he actually cared whether you showed up to help him or not.

You had all the time in the world to be upset later on; for now, among other things, Anakin needed his physiotherapy.

...

"Two more," you said to Anakin. "You've got this."

"I know."

"Okay, now just one. You're doing fantastic."

 _"I know."_

"There! See? That was incred—"

"Could you please take the fucking band off of my goddamn legs, now?"

You stopped being encouraging at that point, and did what was asked of you. The dark-green rubber resistance band you'd wound around what remained of Anakin's legs for the purpose of maintaining their integrity was strong; the strongest of the three different kinds you had at your disposal, in fact. They had the effect of binding his residual limbs together, and his job was to force them apart in spite of the band's strength. He'd already done that and then some several times over— really, you were impressed, although he almost never seemed to want to hear that.

Once the band was off, you looked up and asked him, "Are you ready for the arms, or do you need a few minutes?" 

He was sitting on the same kitchen chair in which he liked to plant himself when he was in the mood to smoke and stare at the wall; however, it was turned away from the table right now. That was to give you room to kneel in front of him and help him with his exercises. The mechanical portions of his legs were leaning up against one of the empty chairs nearby, but for now at least, he still had his arms on.

"I need a few minutes," he answered, without looking down at you.

"Okay. I should put some of that antibiotic on your legs anyway. Would that be alright?"

"Not yet. I don't want to be trapped in the fucking kitchen for an hour."

"Alright," you said, with an entirely unintentional sigh. "Would you rather take this to the living room, then?"

"After I have a cigarette," he told you, as you stood to retrieve his legs. Before you could agree to his proposal, he looked up at you and asked, "What the fuck is wrong with you today, anyway?"

"What are you talking about?" You'd been trying as hard as you possibly could to suppress your emotional response to what had transpired between you and Luke over his new car that morning— partly because the way you felt about what had happened at home had no place at work; partly because you'd rather Anakin not know that you happened to be incredibly angry with his son.

"I'm talking about you," he said, lighting up the smoke he'd mentioned. "You seem like you're trying too fucking hard even more than you usually do."

You narrowed your eyes at him before you could manage to will yourself not to. "I don't know what you mean," you lied, glad to at least have come into possession of a bit of insight as to why he'd never seemed to take a liking to you.

"You're always so fucking _positive,"_ he clarified, as you returned to kneeling in front of him so that you could get his legs back onto him for his walk to the living room.

"You're saying I'm not being 'positive' enough today?" you asked, rolling onto his residual limbs one-by-one the gel-infused liners he wore beneath his prosthetic leg sockets. They absorbed some of the impact generated by his walking, reducing the strain on his stumps and helping to keep his skin reasonably healthy in spite of how often he wore his legs. 

"I'm saying you're going fucking overboard," he corrected you, blowing some smoke out over the top of your head. 

"Well, I'd rather try too hard than not try hard enough," you said, which was honest. It was the philosophy by which you'd always done your job; if it annoyed Anakin, then so be it.

Unexpectedly, he laughed... which you certainly weren't used to hearing him do. "You know what? That's fucking fantastic— sounds like something I'd have said a long time ago." You couldn't tell whether he was being sarcastic, or whether he was finally offering you some actual praise. 

"Thanks— I think."

After the liners had been applied, you had to place the sockets of his prostheses over them as carefully as you could. When Anakin stood up, his body weight would do the work of pushing most of the air out from between the liners and the false legs themselves, creating a near-perfect seal. This type of suction was the best way for him to keep the sockets from moving around too much or slipping out of place as he walked— not only was it almost as secure as a true vacuum seal would have been, but with a bit of patience, he could almost always manage to do the job himself when the need arose. 

Typically you'd have applied lotion beneath the very tops of the liners to prevent them from tugging too much at his skin, but since he'd be taking them off yet again in just a few minutes' time, that didn't seem necessary right now.

"Don't worry about it," he said of your having thanked him for his apparent compliment. "Whatever's got you pissed off today, trust me when I say it's not the end of the world. Nothing's the end of the fucking world."

He was finished with his cigarette by then; after stubbing it out carefully in his ashtray with his right hand, he motioned for you to get out of his way so that he could stand. You did, and while you would have liked to say something in response to his reassurance, you truly couldn't think of what that might be. He was so rarely heartening in any capacity whatsoever that you were as shaken by his words of encouragement as you'd have been if he'd told you to fuck off and die instead. 

You watched him go off to the living room without saying another word, supposing that he was more likely than not correct in his evaluation of your current problem.

That being said, even if thirty thousand dollars wasn't actually the 'end of the world', it certainly felt to you as though it was pretty damn close.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The first part of this chapter was originally the last part of the previous chapter, but that just didn't work.


	8. Photograph

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter ended up being a bit long, but I really like how this story is unfolding.

"Why didn't you tell me you were thinking about buying it _before_ you borrowed the money?"

"Because I was afraid of what you'd say!"

That was a terrible answer; it made you want to get up and leave, but you didn't. You were back at the kitchen table with Luke now, in just about the same configuration as you'd been that morning. You hadn't especially wanted to come home and start this conversation again, but short of packing your bags, there was nothing else you could do: It had to be addressed, and sooner was better than later. You loved Luke more than just about anything; however, you were also more angry about what he'd done than you could ever remember being.

"Do you understand why hearing you say that might make me feel _more_ pissed off instead of less?" you asked. "I've been doing math in my head all day; even if we put five hundred dollars toward this thing every month, it'll still take six years to pay off. And that doesn't even include the interest, or the parking— did you think about where you were going to put it, or...?"

Luke crossed his arms, looked down at the table, and made a face; right at that moment, he looked exactly as petulant as his own father. "If I didn't buy it, someone else was going to—"

"That's not what I asked!" You wished someone else _had_ bought the stupid thing. "I know you understand how big a deal this is, or you wouldn't be so damn defensive about it. I didn't take a job putting up with your dad all day so I could be on the hook for a car that barely even works."

"It works!" he protested. "I started it up tonight after I got home— you should hear it, it's—"

"I don't _want_ to hear it!" If you hadn't been fed up before, you were now. It didn't feel like Luke was even registering what you were saying. He'd always had a tendency to get his head stuck in the clouds, but this was ridiculous. If he could turn it into an emotional argument, though, then so could you. "I asked you this morning if you remembered what we'd already said about saving money for a house, and you said you did." Wide-eyed, you didn't try to hide that you were pleading. Luke had always been fairly sensitive when it came to how the things he did made you feel. It was part of why his decision to go ahead and buy the car without saying a word to you stung so much. 

His expression softened, at least. "I know— but do _you_ remember what _I_ said about how much I can make it worth, if I do some work on it? I'll have to buy a few parts, but—"

 _"Buy parts?_ With what money?" It was beginning to seem to you as though Luke had purchased a black hole as opposed to a vehicle. 

He sighed, and peered back up from the table at you. "Look— I understand why you're mad," he said, "but you're always telling me to go after what I want, aren't you? I didn't expect you to love the idea, but I figured you'd be a bit more understanding than this. I never thought I'd get a chance to even _work_ on a '69 Charger, let alone own one. Maybe I didn't think hard enough before jumping into it, but..." He trailed off, likely because he was all out of justifications for what he'd done.

"Can't you return it?" you asked, appealing to the minute spark of logic he appeared to have just displayed. "Take it back?" 

He shook his head. "No— no, the dealership I bought it from is... well—"

"It's what? What is it?"

"...It's gone out of business," he admitted. 

You sighed, now. It was starting to sink in that there was nothing you could do to remedy this; that you were essentially stuck with Luke's voracious, money-sucking vacuum for the foreseeable future. It felt like someone had shoved a bag of rocks down your throat. 

"Do you realize how tight things are going to be around here until we manage to pay this off? I love you, Luke, but—"

"I'm sorry," he said, getting up and walking around to your side of the table. "I really am— but what's done is done, isn't it? I have it now, so I figure the best thing I can do is follow through with what I was going to do in the first place. If I go ahead with fixing it, then I can always sell it later, remember?"

"So... you're saying you'll _definitely_ sell it when you're done with it?" He hadn't seemed to be able to tell you that before, which had upset you all on its own.

He was quiet.

Standing up alongside him, you prompted him, "Luke?"

"...I don't want to make you a promise I'm not sure I can keep."

That was it, at least for you. Yelling at him wouldn't have helped; trying to reason with him would only have taken you in a circle. He'd already bought the car, and it wasn't as though you could go back in time to change the fact that he hadn't spoken to you about it first. He wouldn't promise to sell it, and taking it back apparently wasn't an option. However much you didn't like it, you were stuck with it... unless, of course, you were prepared to leave him altogether, which— for now, at least— you weren't. 

"I think I'm done talking to you about this for tonight," you said, hoping that the sheer amount of effort you were making to restrain yourself from shouting didn't come through in your words. "Gather up all the paperwork, and show it to me tomorrow; after that, we can figure out what we're going to do. Okay?"

"...Are you still mad?" he asked. You could tell he hoped that you weren't, but of course you were. 

"Yes, I am— and it's less about the money than it is about the fact that you didn't think enough of me to talk to me about it before you did it. I thought I could trust you, and now I feel like I can't." Part of you wanted to reach out and touch him, but you couldn't bring yourself to do so. You didn't feel like kissing him right now; had no desire to hold his hand. 

"I'll work overtime," he said. "Every night, if I have to. I'll—"

"That's a given," you assured him abruptly. "Like I said, though, I'm done with this for tonight. I'm going to have a shower, and then I'm going to go to bed— your dad has an early appointment tomorrow; I have to show up at his house in time to get him there."

"What about dinner?" he asked as you started to turn away. "I thought we were going to make—"

"I'm not hungry," you interrupted, and after that you walked out of the room.

You and Luke wouldn't speak again that night; when you finally felt him crawl into bed next to you, you pretended to be asleep. Once you were sure he was unconscious, you opened your eyes and stared at the crack in the wall until you were too tired to to worry anymore. 

You hardly ever looked forward to going to work these days, but tonight you found yourself more eager than you'd ever been to walk out the door in the morning... even if it did mean managing Anakin and his attitude for an extra couple of hours.

...

"Good morning, Anakin," said the respirologist cheerfully. Short and stout, she appeared to be fairly close to her current patient's own age. She was dressed in a white coat with a name badge, and a stethoscope hung predictably from around her neck. You had just arrived in her waiting room; her office was across the street from the hospital. Anakin, you'd learned just today, visited her twice a year for the purpose of having his lung function assessed. 

"Are you ready for me yet?" Anakin asked. "You know I just want to get this over with."

"I do know," she smiled, "and yes, I'm ready for you." She looked over at you and extended her hand before offering a greeting. "You must be Anakin's new PSW— will you be coming in with him today, or—"

"She'll wait out here," he answered for you before you'd even had a chance to finish shaking the doctor's hand. In your direction, he added, "This might take a few minutes— okay?"

"That's fine," you said. "I'm not going anywhere."

"Let's get to it, then," chirped the doctor, and she led Anakin into the next room. You'd have wished him good luck as he disappeared behind the door, but you knew it didn't make any difference to him what you said, so you didn't bother. 

Once they were out of sight, you sat down in one of the chairs that had been placed around the edge of the room. It was still fairly early in the morning; aside from one man who appeared to be several years Anakin's senior, you were the only person there. He was absorbed in a magazine; however, you didn't feel like reading. Instead, you looked at the carpet for a while, which was grey and thin, and very clean. After you tired of it, you looked up at the ceiling; it was comprised of several white panels that appeared as if they might be made of cork or something like it, and two rows of unadorned fluorescent lights. The walls were a pale shade of pink, and covered with diagrams and charts depicting sets of lungs in various stages of different kinds of disease. Briefly, you wondered just what Anakin's lungs would look like if someone were to pull them out of his body and cast a bright light on them. 

Likely not all that great, you supposed, but it wasn't as though Anakin himself was the type of person to be bothered by something like that.

Soon, your thoughts inevitably drifted to Luke, and what things had been like between the two of you that morning. You still hadn't spoken much to one another, although he had pulled out the paperwork for the loan he'd acquired from the bank to buy his precious car: It had been sitting ominously on the table when you'd met in the kitchen to pour your respective cups of coffee. You'd leafed through it in silence, your stomach tied up in knots. The amount you'd be paying each month negated almost entirely the raise that had come with taking on the job of helping Anakin, and although you knew you'd be able to muddle through it together, you couldn't help but mourn the loss of the life you thought you'd soon be able to start living.

Your desire to purchase a home with Luke, after all, had not been driven solely by the crack in your bedroom wall, or even by how little space you had to move around in your tiny kitchen. You wanted to own a house in large part because you wanted to build a life with Luke. You'd talked about getting married someday, and you'd talked about having children, too. You couldn't raise them where you were living now; at least, you didn't want to... and the prospect of one or both of you taking time off work to care for an infant with this kind of debt hanging over your heads made you feel more fearful than excited. 

Six or more years of paying off that goddamn car was going to throw an enormous wrench into your plans, and it hurt you immensely to know that Luke's priorities apparently didn't match up with yours the way he'd led you to believe. He was lucky you loved him, you thought— very lucky. If you hadn't, you'd already be gone.

His having thrown your money away to buy a big, old, ugly bucket of bolts made you feel both used and misled. You wondered if he understood the implications of his decision; if he didn't, you realized, it was your responsibility to make him. What purpose would that serve now that you were stuck with his choice, though? Anyway, you could hardly bring yourself to speak to him right now; you already knew any conversation you might venture to initiate would only end in traded barbs and angry tears. 

You almost started crying right then; however, your presence in the waiting room of Anakin's lung doctor forced you to swallow the way you felt. You weren't about to start getting emotional at work, particularly not when you were in a public venue waiting for a client. Part of you was curious about what Anakin might say about what his son had gone and done, but you had already decided not to bring it up with him. Again, it wasn't his business, and Luke was old enough that even if his father had decided to chastise him, it would have been to little effect.

You only registered how long you'd been ruminating when Anakin stepped out of the doctor's office looking both irritated and winded. The respirologist herself followed him out; still seeming fairly cheerful, she said to him, "You did just fine— remember what I told you, and I'll see you again in the spring. Okay?"

"Yeah, see you then," he answered, and you supposed his next appointment must already have been scheduled, because he walked right by the receptionist without saying a word to her on his way to the exit. You thought he was going to ignore you too, until he asked both obstinately and with a distinct rasp, "Are you coming or not?"

"I'm coming," you sighed, and after offering the doctor a grateful nod, you followed her patient out of the room. You supposed he wasn't going to be in a particularly good mood for the remainder of the day, and you didn't have energy to waste being angry at Luke when you already had a job to do.

...

By the time you got back to Anakin's house, he sounded, for the most part, like himself again. His breathing tests had consisted of lots of blowing, lots of sucking in air, and a bit more exertion than you supposed he'd become accustomed to in recent years. Those types of appointments always left him feeling tired, he said; you'd postponed his shower to give him a bit of time to gather himself at his kitchen table. Presently, he was smoking a cigarette; however, he was also talking to Leia on the phone. The fact that he was using his hand to hold his smoke meant that the phone had to rest on the table before him in speaker-mode, because he couldn't get a decent grip on it with his hook. 

This allowed you access to both ends of the conversation, as you busied yourself on the other side of the room by cleaning up. Soon you’d start to prepare some food.

"Is it better or worse? What did she say this time?" The concern in Leia's voice was obvious as she asked her father about how his appointment had gone.

"You know it's not going to get better, princess," he said, with what you regarded as uncharacteristic kindness. "But it's also not worse."

"Is it still over fifty percent, or is it less now?" You knew she meant his lungs' overall ability to function. Anakin had told you in the car that his current capacity was sitting at around forty-six percent— so, less than half... but graciously not _too_ much less.

"It's the same as it was last time," he lied, presumably so that she wouldn't worry. He exhaled a thick cloud of smoke right at that moment, which caused him to have to clear his throat.

"Dad, are you smoking a cigarette right now?" asked Leia presciently. "You know what she always tells you about—"

"Sweetheart," he interrupted, "we've had this conversation before— and you know I always tell you the same thing. _I'm fine."_

"But don't you think you should start trying to—"

"Did you hear what I just said? I'm alright, and I'm not going to go over this with you again. You're going to be stuck with me for at least a few more years; you have nothing to worry about." He glanced over in your direction and added, "Anyway, I think we're about to go out and run some errands, so I've got to let you go for now. I'll see you on the weekend, alright?"

"Okay, dad, but—"

"Love you, princess— bye." With that, Anakin stubbed out his cigarette, picked up his stylus, and hung up, seeming quite relieved to have ended the conversation.

You gave him a look before going back to what you were doing, which was using a broom to sweep dust and debris out from behind the refrigerator. "We're not running any more errands today, and you know it," you said, fully intending to make Anakin feel at least a little bit guilty for swiping his daughter's concern away from his screen.

"Leave it be," he said as he rose from his seat and started to approach you, followed by, "Shit."

"What?" you asked. "What is it?"

He bent down carefully to retrieve something you hadn't noticed your broom's having swept free of the underside of the fridge; you thought it was a small piece of paper at first, but upon closer inspection, you realized it was a photograph. He was holding it in his hand so that the picture was facing him, but because you were curious, you sidled up next to him and peeked over his arm to take a look for yourself.

What you saw surprised you a bit, but it also made you laugh in spite of the sort of day you were having. "Is that _you?"_ you asked, fairly incredulously. The photo was of a young man who looked very much like Anakin, but who also clearly wasn't Luke. He was fair and blonde, with four natural limbs and not a scar to be seen. You could tell because he also wasn't wearing a shirt— and even you had to admit that he had once been quite a sight to behold. He looked incredibly athletic, which you supposed made sense given his history of military service. Perhaps most significantly (and most surprisingly), though, he was smiling in the photo— ginning, in fact. 

You hardly, if ever, saw Anakin smile... much less _grin._

"That hasn't been me for a long time," he snapped, stepping away so as to get the photo out of your view.

"You look—"

"Less like a fucking android and more like a human being, I know," he said, glancing down at the pocket on his shorts to ensure his own accuracy in using his mechanical hand to carefully tuck the picture away. Then he turned hastily to leave the room; presumably, he wanted to put the photo somewhere you wouldn't have cause to see it again. 

"...I was going to say 'happy'," you called after him, which was the truth. Given the way you knew him, it was nice to know what he looked like with a smile on his face.

All he could seem to manage to say back to you, though, was "Fuck off," as he ambled down the hallway on his way to the back of the house.

You sighed for what felt like the hundredth time that day as you heard his bedroom door close; after that, you went back to sweeping the floor.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Poor Anakin. :(


	9. Nothing

Time passed. The weeks dragged on, and fall began to morph slowly into winter, but the rift between you and Luke only seemed to grow wider. Not unlike the crack in your bedroom wall, it often felt as though it were turning into a veritable chasm. Its edges, in your mind, were jagged; its interior resembled a deep, inky void. Sometimes you pictured yourself standing precariously on the cusp of it, while at other times you imagined what it might be like to try to jump across it, only to fall in and find yourself unable to climb out.

Mostly you just ignored it... even if ignoring it wasn't going to make it go away.

You'd spoken to Luke, of course, in the time that had passed since the debt from his car had come into your life; however, those conversations were almost invariably circular, and had started to feel mostly pointless. You'd explained to him that you felt cast aside by the way he'd neglected to think about the future you'd ostensibly planned together, but he didn't appear to understand or even be willing to properly acknowledge the issue. You were realizing that he, perhaps, was not in possession of as much foresight as you'd once thought: To hear him tell it, you'd have figured you had all the time in the world to both pay off the car, and live the life you'd both agreed you wanted to try to live together.

To you, though, it seemed as if he was just evading responsibility for changing the trajectory of your life dramatically without asking you. No matter what you did now, it would have caused a host of problems; you and Luke had been in a relationship for what felt like a long time— and in spite of your immense frustration, you knew that the connection you'd put so much effort into building was worth more than the money he'd cost you. (You might also have been a bit too hurt at that point to fully comprehend what a potentially naive thought that was.)

Presently, you couldn't make yourself ignore it because you couldn't get it any of it off of your mind... which particularly distressed you because you were at work: Standing in Anakin's kitchen, to be precise, right in front of his sink. The load of dirty dishes you'd come in here with the intent of cleaning was going ignored, because you were lost inside your own head. You'd just finished helping Anakin with some of his physiotherapy; he was sitting on the sofa in the living room, more likely than not smoking a cigarette and watching the news broadcast. You still hadn't told him what the problem was between you and Luke; as far as you knew, he didn't even know the two of you had been arguing. You thought that was probably for the better.

Forcing yourself to pick up a pan, you began to scrub at what had been cooked onto the bottom of it earlier in the day... but somehow, that only served to remind you of spending time with Luke. The two of you both argued and worked too much to be able to cook together now, or do much of anything else the way you used to. All you ever did recently when you found yourselves together was fight; about money, about time, or about that stupid car of his. When you weren't doing that, you disregarded each other almost entirely. You missed him, but you were angry with him. That made him angry at you right back, which in turn made you angry with yourself.

You put the pan back down in the sink, but you didn't turn off the water: You'd started to cry (it was the first time you'd done so in quite a while now; why were you doing it here?), and the last thing you wanted was for Luke's dad to hear you doing it.

As you leaned on the counter, you tried as best you could to calm yourself; however, you supposed you weren't being as discreet as you'd have liked: From the doorway, you heard Anakin ask you rather suddenly (albeit with a very familiar intonation), "What the fuck is wrong with you?"

"Nothing!" you barked back at him, more harshly than you intended. You didn't look up, and you didn't stop crying— you couldn't. You did turn off the water, though; there was no sense in wasting it now that your cover had been blown.

He was both still and silent for a moment, but soon you registered the sound of him stepping over to where you were standing. You'd left him with his legs leaning up against the side of the sofa; hadn't at all expected to see him walk in. He was supposed rest following his stretches. Had he really taken on the task of pulling himself back together just because he'd heard you emoting into his kitchen sink? Of course not— that wouldn't have been like him. 

You still didn't look up. You didn't like people seeing you cry any more than Anakin liked to have people gawk at his scars.

"It doesn't seem like 'nothing'," he observed calmly, from directly beside you.

He was right, but you didn't tell him that. You just kept staring down at that pan in the sink, trying to will your tears to stop.

"Whatever it is," he tried, "it's not the end of the world." He seemed to like to remind you of that.

"It feels like it is," you told him, before you'd had a chance to think.

To your great surprise, then, you felt a hand on your back. It was hard and stiff, and its touch generated absolutely no warmth whatsoever... _but,_ it was kind— abnormally so. "It isn't," said Anakin, still sounding spectacularly cool and detached. "Nothing is, really."

That prompted you to stand up straight again, although his hand didn't come away from you. Reluctantly, you turned your head to look up at him. "You don't have to do this," you said. "You can go back to the living room." You knew you looked absolutely pathetic, maybe especially so to him. Your eyes were red and your face was wet, and you could feel your own lip trembling as you stared upward. You were quite positive that Luke's father didn't give a shit about any of it.

"...I don't like seeing you cry," he ventured tentatively. His hesitance was as unlike him as the kindness inherent in his touch.

"You've never seen me cry— not before now."

"Seeing it once is enough for me to know I don't like it." He tilted his head; seemed almost inquisitive. You couldn't decode what he might be thinking any better than you normally could. As always (except, of course, for when he was angry), his expression was enigmatic; his thoughts nearly impossible to discern. Was he honestly being kind, or was he just trying to get you to quit crying for his own sake?

That would have been fine, you thought— you were here to take care of him, after all; not the other way around. 

"It really is nothing," you lied, after taking a deep, unsteady breath. Staring up at Anakin wasn't helping; he and Luke just so happened to have virtually identical sets of eyes. You could hardly remember the last time Luke had looked at you with anything even approaching genuine condolence or empathy; the sight of his father, of all people, appearing to do what you wished _he_ would do made your own eyes well up all over again.

Anakin, for his part, seemed somewhat shaken. It wasn't fair for you to do this to him— he wasn't used to dealing with people this way, and you knew it. You wanted to order him back to the living room again, but it really wasn't your place to do so. Besides that, you were suppressing a fresh urge to sob by now, and you had no idea what your words would sound like, if you could even manage to make them come out.

You started to try to apologize, but before you could force anything that sounded remotely like coherent speech to come out of your mouth, you found your lips otherwise occupied, because Anakin had leaned down to kiss you.

He wasn't rough or forceful, and he didn't open his own mouth or try to prod you to open yours. The kiss he offered was very gentle, not unlike his hand upon your back. It was, however, also inexplicable— inexplicable, and utterly inappropriate. Had he forgotten just who you actually were? More than that, had he forgotten the relationship between you and his son?

You wanted to pull away. In fact, you almost certainly _should_ have pulled away, but you just couldn't manage it. His lips were jarringly soft; you were so close to him that you could taste his coffee and his smoke, and smell the shampoo in his hair from the shower you'd helped him take that morning. You felt baffled and a bit guilty, but also (for the first time in what had begun to feel like forever) as if someone cared about the way you felt.

Once again, it was not Anakin's job to care for you. Least of all like this.

"What the fuck are you doing?" you asked, invoking his own parlance as he finally— slowly— pulled away, taking his hand with him. You didn't ask angrily or fearfully; rather, you were bewildered. _Confused._

"I... I don't know," he answered quietly, looking just as unsettled as you were sure you did.

"You kissed me," you said, as if you both didn't already know what had just happened.

"I'm sorry. It's just— well, when my wife used to cry—"

"I'm not your wife, Anakin." In spite of everything, you didn't back away; didn't try to put any extra distance between the two of you, although you almost certainly ought to have.

"...I know you aren't," he admitted. "I just didn't— I mean, I'm not used to..." He trailed off (perhaps that was where Luke had acquired the tendency), and looked down at the floor.

You didn't look at the floor. Instead you stared at his face, trying to figure him out. 

You couldn't.

"Why did you—"

"I don't know."

"What do you want me to—"

"Nothing."

You stood quietly for a few drawn-out moments after that; it seemed as if neither of you knew what to say or do. Finally you told him, "You really can go back to the living room, now." You shifted uncomfortably. "I mean... if you want."

"Okay," he said. "I will." 

He left the room, and you turned back to the dishes in the sink. If nothing else, you were better able to concentrate on getting them done than you had been before— for the first time in weeks, you weren't thinking about Luke and his car. Once you were finished, you began to heat up something for Anakin to eat that night after you'd gone home.

When you finally went out to the living room to tell him what was going on, he suggested that perhaps it would be a good idea if you left a little bit early that day. Since it was only an hour until the time at which you'd usually have headed home, you agreed, although not before confirming with him that he was going to be alright.

Anakin was consistently unpleasant; it had, strangely, been somewhat of a comfort to you during the time since you'd started fighting with Luke: While _he_ might have seemed to change his attitude toward you in recent weeks, his dad certainly hadn't.

You hoped that, by morning, the elder of the two might go back to displaying the same predictable contempt as he always had. 

The very last thing you needed was something new to worry about.

...

Even the act of entering your apartment building irritated you these days, because every single time you did, you had cause to walk past Luke's purchase. This time you couldn't help but notice that it had been wrapped up beneath a thick, canvas tarp— you guessed Luke had done that for the purpose of keeping the frost and snow off of it now that winter was beginning to bear down on you. You hoped he'd acquired the cover from work for free; at the same time, if he did purchase it, you couldn't help but feel as if you'd rather not know how much it had cost. Right now there was a thin layer of snow on it; the snow was fresh and sparkly, and might even have been pretty, were it not dusting the primary source of your new financial anxiety. 

At least, you thought, Luke wouldn't be home yet when you got inside. Between your coming back early and the extra hours he'd been working lately, you didn't expect to see him for quite a while, which was just fine with you. 

You set your things down on the table as you walked into the kitchen, and took a look around. You thought about eating something, but you weren't hungry; considered making coffee, but you'd had more than enough of that over the course of the afternoon you'd spent at Anakin's house. Thinking about coffee at Anakin's house, of course, made you think about his kitchen; thinking about his kitchen made you think about his having kissed you.

Why the fuck had he felt the need to kiss you?

Sitting down in one of the chairs at the table, you looked out the window above the sink at the sky outside. It was grey, and threatening more snow. You had a feeling that Luke wouldn't get much done on that car of his over the course of the season; he had nowhere to work on it indoors, and it was nearly always dark outside by the time he made it home from work. Even if he did decide to sell it after restoring it, you guessed that wouldn't be happening for a while.

There was a tiny pile of spilled sugar on the table from before you'd left for work that day; you thought about gathering it up in your palm to throw it away, but ended up not bothering. After that, you glanced at the clock— time was passing by slowly enough that part of you wished you'd just remained at work, in spite of Anakin's odd behaviour. You didn't have the money to invite anyone you knew out for coffee or dinner, and didn't especially want to have any of your friends sitting in the apartment with you when Luke came home, lest they witness the way your dynamic had deteriorated recently. 

You closed your eyes and took a deep breath, which typically helped you clear your mind. Right now, however, all it seemed to do was invite the memory of what had happened in front of the sink at Luke's dad's house. You wanted to be angry with him, but you didn't seem to have the energy for that; anyway, at least he'd ventured to do something other than tell you to fuck off for once. Again, his behaviour hadn't made you feel frightened; he was an old man with no arms or legs— if you'd felt so inclined, you knew you could have pushed him to the ground and ran off; called Leia to deal with him instead. 

Why _hadn't_ you just pushed him away?

He'd likely just been trying to be kind, you thought; he was so unused to it that you supposed you wouldn't have expected him to possess much skill when it came to displaying sympathy. You imagined that the last woman other than his daughter with whom he'd had cause to interact extensively had very likely been his wife; if that's what he used to do when she would cry into the sink, then what he'd done almost made sense.

...Almost, but not quite.

Again, you should have been upset, but mostly you were just bewildered. 

You stood up at that point, having decided that even if you weren't hungry, the fact that you hadn't eaten since the night before probably meant that you should have something now. There was no sense in waiting for Luke; if you had dinner early, then you could shower early and go to bed early too, eliminating the opportunity for the two of you to end up engaging in an argument.

An instant serving of pre-cooked rice and dehydrated vegetables was as good as anything, you thought, and so you dumped a little packet of exactly that into a bowl. 

You watched it spin around on the little glass plate in the middle of the microwave as it did the work of making itself edible, trying all the while not to think about the brief moment you'd spent today feeling as though someone gave a shit about why you were so upset.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I didn't think anyone but me would ever actually read this, so thank you if you happen to be here for my self-serving tripe. I hope you feel as indulged as I do.


	10. Frozen Bolts

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Short, depressing chapter alert.

Anakin didn't say anything to you about what he'd done when you came back to his house the following morning, and you didn't bring it up either. He was back to being his usual self by then and so were you, insofar as you weren't crying all over his dirty dishes. You were still upset with Luke, of course; still worried about paying his debt... and you certainly still missed the way your relationship had been before he'd demonstrated his capacity for carelessness. You also still didn't talk about it with his dad, though, and you refrained as best you could from bringing your feelings to work with you. They didn't have a place there, particularly given the manner in which Anakin was apparently prone to reacting to them.

Graciously, that first day following the kiss went by without incident; so did the next one, and the one after that too. Except for rare, brief moments during which your mind wasn't otherwise occupied, you mostly managed to forget about the unwarranted display of affection; about the lingering taste of cigarettes and coffee, and the scent of Anakin's preferred shampoo. You still helped him shower; still helped him undress and re-dress and otherwise put himself together whenever he needed it, but it wasn't awkward or uncomfortable— it never had been.

Between his grisly attitude and his tendency to tell you to fuck off, in fact, it was almost as if that odd kiss had never happened. It had been a mistake; something he'd done in error. There was no need to address it, because it wasn't going to happen again. 

You were walking right now, across the parking lot and toward your apartment building after another day of listening to your client grumble. You'd stayed late this evening following an appointment he'd had, this time with the person who fitted him with his prostheses. The visit had only been for routine maintenance on his limbs, but the office had been busy; the two of you had ended up waiting quite a while before being seen. It hadn't been unpleasant, really, and seeing just how Anakin's arms and legs worked from the inside had been rather fascinating. 

The irritation which always overtook you as you approached the spot where Luke kept his Charger pulled you away from those thoughts as it began to set in. The sky had been clear that day, and it had been relatively warm outside given the time of year; however, the last thing you expected to see at this hour was Luke himself poking around under the hood. There was an extension cord running from an outlet on the outside of your building to a light Luke had suspended above the engine. He was bent over, using a wrench to try to unstick an old bolt from some component you'd never have been able to identify.

"How's it going?" you asked, in a voice you hoped denoted some level of interest.

"What do you care?" he countered, without looking up. That stung, but you guessed you could understand why he'd doubt your curiosity. He wasn't wrong to do so, necessarily— you were more concerned with how he was faring in the cold than how his car was coming together. 

"I care about whether or not your fingers are going to fall off," you told him. "Do you want to come inside for a bit? It looks like you've been at this for a while."

"I'll come in when I get this damn bolt off. They always stick worse in the cold." He finally did stand up straight. The oil smears you noticed on his face were something you used to find endearing. "How was my dad today? He hates this weather."

"I know he does," you said. "He's never shy about telling me what he hates. Anyway, he was fine— same as he always is." You hadn't told Luke about the kiss, and you didn't plan on doing so. Not because you thought he'd be upset with you, exactly, but because you just didn't need the added stress of worrying about the way he might react to the news. Anyhow, it wasn't as though Luke himself had been kissing you all that often recently; there was a distinct chance, you thought, that he wouldn't even particularly care.

He was quiet for a moment; after that, he turned and went back to what he'd been doing under the hood of his car. 

"So," you tried, "are you going to come in for dinner soon, or...?"

"I told you— I'll be in as soon I can manage to wrench this thing off. Anyway, I already ate. I left you some of what I had on top of the stove, if you want it."

"Oh," you said. "Thanks." 

He didn't say anything else, and so neither did you. Instead, you continued on with your journey into the apartment, mildly curious about what Luke had left out for you to eat. He hadn't made anything especially elaborate in a long while; even if you two had wanted to spend time with each other that way, you wouldn't have been able to afford the variety or quality of ingredients you'd always enjoyed working with.

Mostly you just hoped it wasn't Hamburger Helper, because in recent weeks, you had consumed it often enough that the mere idea of having to do so again was almost enough to make you sick.

...

Luke's bad luck with that bolt must have continued relatively late into the evening. By the time you had stepped out of the shower after sitting down in front of the television to eat what he'd left out for you (thankfully, tonight it had been rice and beans), he still hadn't come in. You wrapped yourself up in a towel and took a peek out the window, only to see him still at work beneath that hood. You knew he had his phone, and so you thought about sending him a text, but fairly quickly decided against it. He'd probably consider your message an annoyance given that you knew exactly where he was, and aside from that, there was little chance of his fingers still possessing enough dexterity to text you back given how long he'd been out in the cold. 

Since you had no clue as to how much longer Luke planned on being out there, and since you were genuinely tired, you figured the best thing you could do would be to go to sleep. He hadn't seemed interested in talking to you when you'd arrived, and you didn't feel up to dealing with the icy disposition he was sure to bestow upon you after coming upstairs. 

You walked away from the window, tossed your towel over the shower rod in the bathroom, and crawled into bed beneath the sheets. It wasn't warm there, but it also wasn't cold. It didn't take you an especially long time to start to get drowsy, and very soon, your eyes began to close. For a split second prior to falling into a precariously light sleep, you could have sworn you tasted coffee and cigarettes on your lips; smelled a hint of shampoo that was nothing like the kind you'd just used on your own hair. You ignored it because it wasn't relevant, and let yourself drift into grateful unconsciousness as the crack in the wall beside the closet slowly faded from view.

You couldn't discern how long it was before you woke up (at least partially) to the sensation of Luke's body depositing itself on the mattress next to you. You could tell he hadn't showered because he still smelled like oil, and his body somehow seemed to radiate the cold it must have absorbed while he'd been outside fiddling with his car. Part of you expected him to say something to you; whisper some sort of greeting, or even just a few affectionate words before laying down. He didn't, though, and so you didn’t move; pretended to be unaware of his presence. 

No part of him did even so much as brush up against you as he settled, and you couldn't decide whether you felt relieved or disappointed by the dearth of attention. Being upset with him didn't stop you from loving him, and it didn't stop you from feeling lonesome, either... but you weren't about to beg for what you presumed he didn't want to give you. 

You waited a few minutes, and when all was quiet and still once again, you started to fall back into a fragile sleep. Even that was soon disturbed, however, by a very distinct type of motion from Luke's side of the bed. It emanated from him not unlike the chill that had sunk into his bones from being out in the parking lot; it was rhythmic and desperate, and although it perhaps shouldn't have, it both hurt and frustrated you.

If he was going to jerk off without even trying to wake you up first, then why the hell did he have to do it next to you in bed? 

You thought about sitting up or rolling over; even thought about attempting to aid him in his endeavour... but what would have been the point? If he wanted your help, he surely would have asked for it. 

Clamping your eyes tightly shut, you stayed immaculately still while you listened to Luke coax himself to sleep. Even when his pace picked up, he didn't writhe or buck or jump. He also didn't make much in the way of noise, save for a few stifled grunts and groans as he apparently neared his peak. It wasn't long at all before you felt him wrench his body to the side, reminding you that if you were the first to arrive home after work the next day, it wouldn't be a bad idea to change the sheets. 

He took a few moments to catch his breath once he was finished. After that, he wiped his hand off on the bed, and rolled over so that he was facing away from you.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry if you like Hamburger Helper. 😷
> 
> Back to our sad, deceptively caring old man next time.


	11. Any Moment *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is a bit long.

"I'm sorry I'm still here," you said to Anakin from your spot beside him on the couch. It was well past six in the evening, but you were sitting in his living room with him anyway. It was snowing steadily; it had been nearly all day long, and the city hadn't seemed to have sent its ploughs out to clear the streets in Anakin's neighbourhood yet. 

You'd already phoned Luke to let him know what was going on, and he'd flat-out insisted that you not try to drive through the storm... although, somewhat cynically, you were certain he'd been motivated more by a desire to be alone for a while than by his concern for you. His father, right now, was smoking; you were doing nothing. The news was on, but you weren't paying attention to it. You did wonder if Anakin was, although perhaps not quite enough to actually ask.

"It's fine," he answered your apology. "It's not your fault." 

"Thanks," you said. "I'll get out of your way as soon as I can." 

He didn't look at you, but you were looking at him. His expression was stony and his jaw was clenched, just the same as always. Anakin, you reflected absently, never really looked properly relaxed: The tendons in his neck stood out perennially amongst old, stubbornly stalwart muscles; his shoulders were always pulled back, as if he'd never stopped standing at attention after being discharged from the military. (He was, in fact, even wearing the decades-old, dull-green shorts and t-shirt in which he used to run, back when he'd still been a soldier.) On top of that, you knew very well how uncompromisingly tense the remainders of his natural arms and legs were due to how very often you had cause to touch them. 

You found yourself wondering if he ever actually felt happy (or anything approaching it), and if he did, when that might be. It certainly never seemed to happen around you; when he managed a smile, it only ever stayed on his face for a moment or two.

"You're not 'in my way'," he told you after a drawn-out pause, in a tone of voice which seemed to contradict the very statement itself. 

"It always feels like I am," you dared to say, which you might not have, had it been the middle of the day. 

He sighed, shook his head, and went on smoking his cigarette. Just when you were starting to think he was finished talking altogether, he finally turned to look at you; asked with what felt like incredible suddenness, "Do you want something to drink?"

"I... what?" You weren't sure what he meant. There was coffee on the counter in the kitchen; juice and water in the fridge. He'd never offered you anything before— you'd always simply had what he was having, if he was having anything.

"Drink— do you want something to drink?"

"I don't understand."

He discarded his smoke, got up from his spot on the couch, and disappeared from view for a minute or two. When he came back, he was holding a bottle. You couldn't see the label, because he'd taped a strip of rubberized foam around it to make it easier for himself to pick up with his prosthesis. It was the same material in which he wrapped things like his coffee cup, his razor, and and the handle of his hairbrush. He sat down with what he'd brought out, and opened it. It hadn't been capped very tightly.

"If you feel like being prissy," he said, "you can go and get yourself a glass." After that he took a sip, and held the bottle out to you.

You cocked your head at him, but you didn't refuse his offer. "This is fine," you said, examining what he'd given you for just long enough to discern that it was vodka. It was cheap, but you didn't care about that, really— it wasn't as though you'd been able to afford liquor yourself recently. The last time you'd been tipsy, in fact, had been on Luke's birthday; that felt like ages ago. You sniffed it, took a sip of your own, and gave it back. It wasn't smooth, exactly... but it was warm, and you appreciated the way it felt going down. "Do you do this a lot?" you asked next, watching him swallow another mouthful. 

He passed the bottle over to you again, leaned forward, and took in his hand a fresh cigarette he'd left sitting loose on the table. There was a little pile of matches beside it, and one of those pieces of sandpaper he used to make striking them a bit easier on himself. "Not as often as I'd like," he said matter-of-factly through his teeth as he lit up his next smoke, "but often enough." He seemed to consider something carefully before starting to say, "Don't tell—"

"Your kids," you finished for him. "I know— and I won't." 

"Thanks."

You took another sip too and gave it back to him once more; he put his cigarette down in the ashtray for a moment so he could hold the bottle. The two of you went on like this for a little while, in silence. You weren't thinking about the expression you were wearing on your face, but something about it must have struck Anakin.

"What the fuck is wrong with you?" he asked. He sounded fairly tipsy himself; perhaps having noticed as much, he set down his liquor with an air of finality. You guessed it took less to get him drunk these days than it did back when he'd still had arms and legs.

"I don't know," you answered, which wasn't entirely truthful... but it was easier than outright lying, and it was easier than explaining everything you felt was the matter with your life.

"I know about the car," he said, to your surprise. "Leia told me how much Luke spent on it." 

"Oh." You didn't know what else to say. You hadn't wanted to talk about it with Anakin; it wasn't his business, and even if you had felt like sharing, there was nothing he could do about it anyway. Luke was an adult, albeit one who had made a childish decision. 

"I'm sorry he did that to you," Anakin said next. "I don't know what the fuck he was thinking."

That made you laugh despite yourself. "I don't either," you told him.

You sat quietly for a few more minutes after that, ignoring the television in favour of watching Anakin's smoke swirl around in the air. The vodka had worked its way through your system by then; you didn't feel better, necessarily, but you did feel less tense— less _everything,_ really.

"That's what had you upset at the sink the other day, wasn't it?" he asked, referring to when he'd bestowed on you that strange, inappropriate kiss. 

You nodded. "Yeah," you said. "It was."

He finished with his most recent cigarette. "Why didn't you say anything about it then?" he asked, with a distinctly curious expression writ on his face.

"How would saying anything have helped?"

"I don't know," he admitted.

"I figure you don't give a shit about what happens to me after I go home at the end of the day as long as I come back to do the dishes the next morning." You might not have been so glib if you hadn't been drinking.

"Why the fuck would you think that?" he asked, and if you hadn't known better, you'd have thought he sounded offended.

You laughed again, because his query, at that moment, was downright funny to you. "You treat me like shit."

"I treat everyone like shit," he reminded you, although you could have sworn you detected a hint of contrition in his voice.

"Did you ever think about... I don't know, _not_ doing that?" you asked, for no real reason other than your own curiosity.

"You remember what I ended up doing the last time I tried to be nice, don't you?" he asked, and you knew he meant that kiss. You'd played it over in your head more times by that point than you cared to admit, whether you'd wanted to or not. The way it had felt was etched in your mind, along with Anakin's scent— and the taste of his lips, too. You'd tried to convince yourself numerous times that you'd hated it; that you'd been repelled by the notion of being close to him that way. Not only were you his personal support worker, you were also less than half his age, and ostensibly still in a committed relationship with his son. 

"I remember," you said. "I don't know what you were thinking then any more than I know why Luke thought dropping thirty thousand dollars on a broken car from the 1960's was a good idea." Maybe the two of them were more alike than you had always thought— maybe their resemblance didn't end with their eyes, or even their lips. You shouldn't have known a thing about Anakin's lips.

"I was trying to make you feel better," he said, quite inexplicably.

"That's a hell of a way to make your son's girlfriend feel better," you chuckled, not intending to laugh.

You supposed it was a good thing that he laughed too. He also reached for his bottle again. Before taking another sip, "I've gotta ask— did it work?"

"Huh?"

"Did it make you feel better?" He drank, and then moved to give the bottle back to you.

You studied his expression as you grasped the vodka by the neck. You couldn't decipher him. "It distracted me," you admitted. "I hardly thought about the damn car again all night, if you want to know the truth." You weren't considering how he might take that; right now it didn't seem to matter.

"That's something, then," he said.

"You know Luke would—"

"He'd be fucking livid. You didn't tell him, did you?"

"No, and I'm not going to. Remember the onions?"

"I remember."

You took another sip yourself, then put the liquor back on the table. You guessed you wouldn't be driving anywhere tonight, even if the ploughs did show up outside. "Anyway," you said, "I'm starting to think Luke doesn't care much about what I do anymore, besides helping him with his bills." That might have been somewhat of a morose evaluation of the state of your relationship, but to you it felt accurate. You realized then that the last person you'd kissed had, in fact, been Anakin. 

"He cares about you," Anakin told you, "even if he's too much of a stubborn fucking dumbass to show it. He can't help that, by the way— he's too much like me."

You smiled. "I never thought you were very much alike at all, to be honest," you said. "Not until Luke started acting like an asshole, anyway."

Anakin laughed loudly at that. "Thanks," he said. He was definitely well on his way to being hammered drunk by now, but then again, so were you.

That must have been why you went ahead and told him, "You two have the same eyes, you know— they're identical." They were. Wide and blue, the only difference between them might have been that Anakin was old enough not to let his betray the way the felt quite so often as Luke tended to.

"You think?" He sounded like he wanted you to keep talking. Anakin _never_ sounded like he wanted you to keep talking. 

"Sure. That was part of what kept me from pushing you over and running out of the house when we were standing in front of the sink." Again, you spoke more flippantly than you would have under most other circumstances.

"Really?"

"Really."

"You're nice to kiss," he revealed, completely without warning. "Luke is crazy if he hasn't been doing anything to try and make things right with you."

You might have been taken aback if not for that vodka. "Sometimes I think he might be a little nuts... but not necessarily because of that. Anyway, you know what?" You paused, but not for very long. "...You're nice to kiss, too." Why the hell did you say that? _Was_ he nice to kiss? Of course he was— why else wouldn't you have been able to get the way he'd done it out of your mind? 

"...I am?"

"You are."

He hesitated. "...You said you hadn't mentioned those onions yet."

"Not a word," you confirmed. It was only then you noticed that you and Anakin had somehow ended up nearer to one another than you remembered being when you'd first sat down. You would have noticed him sitting so closely when he'd brought the bottle over, so it had to have happened after that, although you truly weren't sure how.

You'd been glancing between the television and each other for a while, but now you realized that he was staring at you. You wouldn't have noticed if you hadn't been staring, too.

He started to lean in. You didn't, but you also didn't back away. Carefully and with what seemed like an enormous amount of trepidation (although clearly not enough to stop him), he finally dared to press his lips against yours. It was almost exactly as it had been in the kitchen the other day, except this time he tasted like vodka instead of coffee. He also brought his right hand up to your face and touched it; if you hadn't been drunk, you might have stiffened at how cold and hard it felt. You wondered why he'd bothered, because there was no way he could feel it. Perhaps it was instinct; maybe this was how he used to kiss his wife, back when his hand was actually made of him. Maybe it was just for you.

"What are you doing?" you asked when he was finished, in almost the same way as you had the first time this happened... except, perhaps, with less bemusement (and profanity). Neither of you had drawn back, exactly; you were still nose-to-nose. 

"I'm sorry," he said, which really wasn't an answer. He still didn't pull away. He also didn't take his hand off of your face.

"We've both had a lot to drink," you noted, shifting your gaze briefly toward the now-depleted bottle on the table.

He nodded. "That's true."

You realized you were trembling then, if only slightly. Anakin's hands were made of plastic and steel; they never trembled, and that was how you knew it was you. "I thought you didn't like me," you said. 

He looked like he might be about to laugh again, but he didn't do that. Instead he countered, "I've always liked you."

"Oh." 

You lifted your own hand, and used it to carefully (or, as carefully as you could in your current state) push away from his eyes a few strands of hair that had fallen into them. It looked like it might have once been the colour of straw or maybe amber, not entirely unlike Luke's. Now, though, it was dusty-looking; shot through with streaks of grey and white. Those suited him. You touched his face next; ran your hands over the deep creases at the sides of his eyes and mouth, and a series of faded scars you assumed must have been awfully prominent when he'd acquired them. He certainly looked his age from this close-up, you thought, but that wasn't a surprise. He always looked his age.

"I told Luke to be good to you," he said quietly. "I told him that the first time he ever brought you here." He sounded uncharacteristically apologetic, something else you attributed mostly to the vodka. He'd regret telling you all of this the next day, and you knew it; similarly, you would regret showing him the kind of affection you were showing him right now.

"So why haven't _you_ been nicer to me this whole time?" You really didn't understand: If he didn't actively dislike you, then why all the fuck offs; why the unrestrained, near-constant rudeness? You wouldn't have put up with it, had he been anybody but Luke's father.

"Because old men shouldn't look at their son's girlfriends the way I'd look at you if I didn't force myself to treat you like garbage." 

You should have balked at that; maybe you should even have been angry, or offended. Without question, you absolutely should have backed away; however, all things considered, it felt as though the time for backing away had long since passed. After letting your mind pan over all of the things you ought to have been feeling, you considered how you actually did feel. Mostly you just felt drunk, but besides that, you felt _warm._ Not just physically warm (although you very much were) but warm in a way you hadn't felt for a long time— since before the spectre of paying off that stupid car had overtaken nearly every facet of your life.

Would you have felt this way about _anyone_ who had ventured to kiss you, drink with you, and tell you that they liked to look at you? Maybe. For better or for worse, though, it wasn't just anyone you were touching right now.

"Anakin," you said.

"What is it?" He sounded as if he had something caught in his throat. 

"No one can know. _No one."_

"I won't tell," he promised, and by then his prosthetic fingers were trailing down your neck toward the collar of your shirt. You'd never felt anything quite like that. Again, it must just have been for you; his hand may have been highly functional, but he couldn't actually feel you with it. 

Your own hand was resting on his chest by now; it was a strong chest, and you'd seen it enough times to know the extent of the scarring that marred it. Would he mind, you wondered, if you were to slip your fingers up beneath his shirt to touch his skin? You found yourself wanting very much to touch his skin. Because you were more than a little curious, you started to ask, "When was the last time you—"

"Before you were born," he said without even letting you finish your question, because he knew very well what you were going to ask. That meant he'd never done this in the body he currently inhabited, which for some reason made you feel sad for him. It also, however, had the effect of making you want him more, whether that was right or terribly wrong.

In the process of searching for the hem of his shirt, you happened to brush your hand up against something very distinct; something those old, dull-green shorts he used to wear to run laps were woefully unequipped to hide. He shifted, seemingly embarrassed. You didn't want him to feel that way, so you changed your hand's trajectory: Instead of the edge of his shirt, you opted to toy with his waistband instead.

He made a noise, then you did too, and after that you began to undress him. You'd undressed him before, of course, but never quite like this. He moved to help you as you pulled his shorts off sloppily past his hips, and then more carefully over his mechanical knees and ankles; once you'd discarded them, you went back to tugging at the hem of his shirt. He lifted his arms for you, and despite the vodka, you made sure not to catch the rounded hook he wore at the end of the left one with the fabric. You looked him over before you began to pull off your own shirt; hoped he didn't feel too vulnerable.

In spite of his limitations, he certainly didn't look it.

He sat up a bit taller as he watched you slide your pants off and kick them away, along with what you'd been wearing underneath them. "Do you really want this," he asked, "or are you just being kind to me?"

You thought it was a strange question. "I'm not that kind, Anakin," you said, straddling his legs. You especially had no reason to be this kind to _him;_ if you hadn't been genuinely aroused, then you wouldn't be naked on his couch, drunk or not. 

Now that you were seated on his lap with one knee on either side of him, you leaned in to kiss him some more; you'd been telling the truth when you'd said it felt nice to do. He touched your leg with his hand, although he seemed unsure as to what he ought to do with his hook. You'd never done this with anybody in possession of a false limb before, let alone four of them, but now that you were in the midst of it, it didn't seem to make much of a difference. 

As your lips parted and your tongues met, you pressed your body into his. A sound escaped his throat then, and he wrapped his left arm around you despite his hook. The chill of the steel made you jump as it met the skin on the small of your back. You placed one of your own hands at the nape of his neck; soon, you were running your fingers through his hair. Your other hand travelled slowly up and down his side, paying very little mind to the various bumps and other irregularities denoting his scars. You knew he didn't like them, but they didn't bother you; they never had. That was when you noticed how warm _he_ was, particularly in contrast with his prosthetic extremities.

You pulled back to tell him, "You're as nice to touch as you are to kiss," because you guessed he was likely wondering whether or not you thought so.

He responded, somewhat unpredictably, by sinking his teeth into your neck. Who'd have thought Anakin would like to bite? The pinnacle of his apparently long-repressed desire for you was pressing into the inside of your thigh; as he bit down on you, you could feel the head of it throb and even leak. You'd seen that part of him before too, but again, never quite like this. It had scars of its own; part of you hadn't been sure whether or not it could even still do what it was doing at the moment, but now you felt almost guilty for doubting that.

He was still biting you, making his way down your neck until he was nipping at your chest. When he reached the edge of your bra, you took your hands off of him for the sole purpose of reaching behind yourself and unclasping it. Before it could even hit the floor in front of the couch, he was already eagerly sucking on your breasts. You squirmed and gasped when his teeth grazed your nipples; with every little sound you made, you could feel him twitch. 

After taking the time to kiss the marks you could already tell he'd foolishly left on your neck, he looked up at your face. "If you want to fuck me," he said, "I think you should do it before I—"

"Alright," you interrupted, because you understood. You took your hand away from his hair, and used it to grip him firmly by the very base of his arousal instead. If he really hadn't had sex in nearly thirty years, you supposed it made sense that he was liable to go off at almost any moment. You did want to fuck him, though, so with a sharp breath, you shifted atop him and guided him inside you. You were more than ready for him, between all of his touching and kissing, and biting and sucking.

The way his breathing changed as you came down on him and brought your hand back up to play with his hair some more was such that you thought you might end up jumping off of him to retrieve his inhaler... but graciously, he didn't start to cough or wheeze. What he did do was slide his own hand up from your leg to your waist to grip you as firmly as you knew he could, while at the same time running the smooth, metallic end of his hook up the length of your spine. You'd never have guessed that being fondled with a thin length of stainless steel would feel good, but it did.

It felt so good, in fact, that you couldn't have stopped yourself from beginning to move your hips, even if you'd tried. It had been too long since you'd last done this, although you had hardly registered how much you'd really missed it before now. Anakin's scars made his sliding in and out of you feel incredibly unique; as you picked up your speed, you clenched yourself around him as tightly as you could, because you wanted to feel every little bump and ridge.

 _"Christ,"_ he breathed, squeezing his eyes shut and almost seeming to grimace.

"Does it hurt?" you asked, a maybe bit breathlessly yourself. You were concerned... although perhaps not concerned enough to stop. You did tug on his hair, however; even raked the nails of your opposite hand down his chest— if he was going to bite, then surely you were free to scratch. 

"No, it's just— I— _fuck—!"_

You countered him with your own high-pitched squeal as you felt him surge, and then burst with infinitely greater force than you could ever have anticipated. 

"I'm sorry," he gasped, as you pushed down hard on him while he drained. You noticed that you could feel the edges of his gel-infused leg socket liners with your feet from the position you were in. 

"It's okay," you said, because again, neither of you seemed to have expected him to last altogether too long. It didn't matter; you'd needed this as much as he had seemed to. For now, it was enough. _He_ was enough.

"Next time I'll—"

"There can't be a next time," you reminded him, reluctantly pulling yourself off of his lap. "We can't ever do that again." 

You were still drunk, but you weren't delusional. You knew exactly what you'd just done, and also that you never, ever should have done it. You planted yourself very near to him on the cushions anyway. He didn't have the unrelenting six-pack you'd seen in that old photo; not anymore, but his body was hard: Resolute, really, in a way you'd never have expected. As you ran your hand across his chest and over his stomach, you realized you could feel what he'd left you with leak onto your thighs... and most likely the couch, too.

Maybe he didn't like to let his scars show, but it wasn't as if they were going to go away. You appreciated them; they made touching him different— far different from touching his son, or anyone else for that matter. 

He was breathing as deeply and steadily as he could; you were still relieved that he didn't seem to need his medicine after what he'd just done with you. 

"Pass me a cigarette," he said, and so you did. As he put it in his mouth, you struck a match for him; held it up to his smoke. After shaking it in the air to make it go out, you dropped it into the ashtray. He gave you a curious look, but he didn't say anything else.

You went back to touching him while he smoked (you even dared to rest your head on his shoulder), but now you turned your gaze toward the television. It was playing a cheerful ad for toothpaste. Not cinnamon toothpaste— just the normal kind. It occurred to you then that Anakin would sleep comfortably that night: Since you were undoubtedly staying over, he could take off all of his limbs; rest for as long as he pleased without rolling onto a piece of hard plastic or surgical-grade steel. 

If the kiss he'd given you in the kitchen had been inappropriate, then this was downright calamitous. 

You couldn't help but glance between the television and the clothes now haphazardly littering the floor while you settled in on the sofa. Letting the gracious buzz from the vodka overtake you, you tried as best you could not to contemplate the fact that you and Anakin now had a brand-new secret to keep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Snowed-in - check  
> Drunk cheating - check  
> Waxing poetic about ~eyes~ - check
> 
> Yep, it's a fanfic. (Sure is fun to write, though.)


	12. A Hassle

You'd have thought that Anakin's lack of fondness for people seeing him in a state of near-total deconstruction would have prohibited him from inviting you to share his bed, but apparently, that wasn't the case. Whether it was the vodka or the sex, or just the fact that he seemed to be able to sense that you wanted it, something made him (although in somewhat of a roundabout way) ask you not to leave his room after following him from the sofa. You'd only gone in there, initially, to help him take himself apart. 

The act of doing any portion of your job without clothes was a surreal experience, although not necessarily a bad one. When you looked up at Anakin from between his knees in the midst of easing his legs off of him, the expression on his face wasn't twisted into a contemptuous scowl, or hardened into a stony glare. He wasn't smiling— that might have been too much to expect— but he also didn't look as though he was about to jump out of his skin.

"Where are you going?" he asked, coming awfully close to slurring his words as you turned to walk out of the room after pulling his blanket up over his shoulder.

"Back to the couch," you told him sleepily, because you were positive that was what he wanted.

When he countered your answer, however, with a simple and inscrutable "Why?" you fairly quickly changed your mind; paced around to the other side of the bed, and slid in next to him beneath his sheets.

He was laying on his side. You felt guilty for pressing the front of your body into the back of his, but that wasn't enough to stop you from wrapping one of your arms around him, too. Your guilt stemmed partially from the fact that Anakin was not Luke (although frankly, pretending might not have been too difficult if you'd felt inclined to do so), and partially from the even more uncomfortable fact that it didn't matter to you just then whether or not the person you were holding even so much as resembled Luke at all.

Luke, recently, didn't seem to want you to hold onto him— if his dad did, then so be it. (That thought, of course, was most prominent in your mind only before Anakin's vodka had worn off.)

Your head hurt when you woke up in the morning, and for a moment you were unsure as to just where you were... that is, until you decided to wrap one of your legs around those of your bedmate, only to find your calf rubbing up against the very end of one of the mottled stumps you were paid to clean and dry and rub antibiotic lotion onto.

"Anakin," you whispered, but he was still asleep. Despite being sober now (if not a bit hungover), you took the opportunity to run your hand down his arm until you reached the smooth, sudden end of that limb, too. Palming it gently, you kissed the back of his shoulder, which finally seemed to cause him to stir.

"What the fuck—"

"I'm sorry," you said, before he could finish that thought.

You moved to let him turn over onto his back. Sitting up in the bed, you looked down at him. He was bleary-eyed in just the same way he'd been the very first time you'd ever shown up in the morning to help him; his hair (in part thanks to you, no doubt) was more than a bit of a mess. 

He didn't say anything, but he did hoist himself up into a seated position with a grunt. That impressed you; not only did he have neither of his arms to assist him, he also didn't have any leverage below his knees. You guessed the way his body felt made sense, given the sheer amount of core strength he'd just displayed. He glanced between you and a pack of cigarettes he'd left sitting atop the nightstand on his opposite side; after that, he lifted the remainder of his right arm and asked, "Do you think you could...?"

"Sure," you nodded. 

You tossed the blanket off of yourself, got up, and went around the bed to where you'd left his right hand and forearm the night before. His residual limb slipped into a thin, silicone liner adorned with a locking mechanism at the tip, followed by a socket attached to the prosthesis itself. Electrodes lined the inside of the socket; when the internal battery was charged (it was right now, because you'd replaced it not long before sitting down to drink with him), they were able to read the signals his brain sent to the muscles in what was left of his natural arm. A dark swath of a faux leather-like material helped to ensure its integrity; you wrapped that around his bicep once the device was in place, and soon his hand came to life.

"Thanks," he said, using his thumb and forefinger to pluck from his pack a cigarette that had already been sticking half-way out. He had a bowl of matches and a strip of sandpaper here too; with those, he lit up his smoke with ease.

You couldn't help but stare at him for at least a few moments, but soon he made it clear through his own expression that he'd noticed you looking. Before he could say anything about it, you offered him a smile, and then turned to walk away. "I'll be back in a minute," you said, heading out to the living room to retrieve your clothes. It felt as though you ought to put them on now, and anyway, Anakin would want coffee when he got out of bed. Usually you'd have set up his percolator to turn on by itself in the morning before leaving to go home; however, last night you hadn't left at all.

Once you were dressed and the coffee was on, you went back to Anakin's bedroom. He was just stubbing out his smoke; you knew that immediately afterward he would reach for his other arm and proceed to coax it onto himself. You spared him the effort for today; sat down on the edge of his bed and retrieved it for him. You were no more or less effective than he was in actually applying it, but you did get the job done faster, which he seemed to appreciate.

After watching him open and close his hook a couple of times to ascertain its functionality, he looked back up at you. 

"Legs?" you asked, to which he nodded. 

Kneeling down in front of him, you attached his lower limbs to his body in comfortable silence. Having finished with that, you rose from the floor and asked him if he wanted help with his clothes. When he told you he was fairly certain he could manage that for himself, you let him know he'd be able to find you in the kitchen once he was finished.

Part of you was a bit shocked at the notable lack of awkwardness which had come with waking up next to Anakin in his bed; part of you thought it made perfect sense, given the length of time you'd been working with him and the intimacy it entailed.

All of you, though, knew very well that what had transpired between the two of you last night couldn't be allowed to happen again, no matter how much either of you may have needed or even enjoyed it. Again, the last thing you wanted was something new to worry about, least of all the prospect of being caught mired in an affair with your boyfriend's father.

...

"What do you think of that, dad?" Leia paused and waited for a response, but right now it seemed that she wasn't getting one. _"Dad?"_

"Hm? What?"

Anakin and his daughter were sitting across the kitchen table from one another, as they often did when she would come to visit. You were glad you'd taken the liberty of tucking Anakin's vodka away in a cabinet before she'd shown up, and you were even more glad you'd put your clothes back on: As it turned out, you'd slept in; she had arrived not too long following Anakin's emergence from his bedroom. You supposed that meant the ploughs had arrived sometime after you'd fallen asleep.

"My idea— do you like it?"

"I'm sorry, princess— I must not have caught what you said. Tell me again?"

Leia smiled thinly, and shook her head. She was always patient with her dad, and he was just about always equally patient with her. Since starting to work with him, you'd had cause to see them interact more often; it was through those interactions that you had realized Luke was right concerning what he'd told you about their relationship: If there was anything that could reliably soften Anakin's disposition, it was his daughter. He was scarcely ever as brusque with her as he was with anyone else, even at times such as this one. Another pang of guilt reverberated through you, because you knew very well that it was your fault he wasn't really listening. 

"You seem distracted today, dad," she observed, and you were glad to be at the counter with the coffee pot instead of seated at the table.

"I'm always distracted," he excused himself as he lit a fresh cigarette, without missing a beat. "Tell me what your idea is one more time— I promise I'm listening."

"I asked you if you thought it might be okay to have Christmas here this year— Luke and I could come over the day before, and then spend the night." Glancing over in the direction of the table, you couldn't help but notice how hopeful she looked.

"I don't know," said Anakin. "We haven't done that since—"

"Since Uncle Ben died, I know," she finished for him. "But I miss it, and I'll bet Luke does, too. Wouldn't it be nice to have everyone together for a little bit this year?"

"It sounds like a hassle," he answered, because although he was always kind to Leia, he was still unabashedly himself. "You know I don't like to do much for—"

"I do know, but I just thought—"

Anakin interrupted her with a heavy sigh, at which point you walked over to the table with a fresh cup of coffee for him. 

Leia looked up at you then. "What do you think of it?" she asked. "You'd be there too; wouldn't it be nice to spend some time with Luke without having to think about that car of his?" He must, at some point, have already told her that it had upset you, although you doubted he'd adequately communicated just how much.

"I— well..." You didn't especially like the thought of having to pretend to be on good terms with Luke for any length of time; not in front of both his dad and his sister, and particularly not given what had happened the night before. The expression on Leia's face told you that it would mean a lot to her to have her family together during the holiday, however, so after waffling for a moment, you conceded, "...It _does_ sound nice."

That was when Anakin himself shot you a look; one that told you he had expected you to support him in his reluctance. You wanted to apologize, but you didn't; not just then.

"See?" asked Leia. She turned back to Anakin. "Won't you just think about it? It's not for another month and a half."

It was fairly clear to you that he had started to feel backed into a corner. "...Fine," he said. "I'll think about it. But I still think it'll end up being more trouble than it's wor—"

"Thanks, dad!" Leia smiled; even you knew he wasn't likely to end up saying 'no' to her now. She checked her phone then, which had been sitting on the table in front of her. "I've got to get going— but I'll be back on the weekend; do you think you'll have made up your mind by then?"

After a long, hard drag off of his cigarette, he told her, "Yeah— yeah, I'll have made up my mind by then."

She got up from the table; after thanking Anakin one more time, she leaned down to hug him. He was careful to hold his smoke as far away from her as he could while she did. Then, she walked out of the room and headed for the front door. You followed her, because you wanted to empty the ashtray in the living room anyway.

"Thanks for helping me out in there," she said to you. "He never wants to do anything for Christmas... but he's getting older now, and I don't want him to waste another holiday sitting around by himself. You understand, don't you?"

You did. Anakin was, indeed, getting older; aside from that, he seemed at times to almost disdain taking decent care of himself. It was easy to see why Leia wanted her and Luke to spend some extra time with him, particularly at this time of year. 

"I get it," you said. "And you were right— maybe spending a night with Luke somewhere I don't have to see that damn car every time I look out the window would be a good thing." You didn't actually think it would help all that much, really, but you weren't about to say that to Leia right now.

"I think it'll be nice for everyone," she agreed. Before turning to walk out the door, she added, "For what it's worth, by the way, I don't know what would make Luke think that buying that thing was a good idea— if he'd asked me what I thought of it before he did it, I would have told him he was being stupid."

"That's probably why he didn't ask," you said. 

She laughed. "That's probably true. Tell him I said hi to him anyway, and ask him what he thinks about my idea, okay?"

"I will," you assured her as you watched her walk down the driveway to her car. Once she was out of earshot, though, you sighed. Given the way you and Luke had been with one another recently, you had virtually no desire to sit down with him and discuss holiday plans. Until Leia had made her suggestion, in fact, you'd assumed that Christmas would end up being a day like any other— that you and Luke would spend it largely ignoring one another until it was finally time to go to bed; after that, you would ignore each other some more.

That made you think that maybe— just maybe— getting away from the apartment with him for a couple of days really would be good for the both of you... even if you'd have preferred to do it somewhere you wouldn't have to both keep up appearances, and be around his dad. After all, you still didn't know what things were going to be like with Anakin going forward. It certainly would have been a lie to say that you weren't anxious about how your interactions may or may not end up changing as a result of last night's error in judgment.

At least Leia hadn't seemed to notice the bite-marks you could still feel on your neck— or if she had, then she'd likely (thankfully) assumed that they had been imposed on you by her brother.

You bent over the coffee table to pick up the ashtray; with that in hand, you went back to the kitchen to throw out the butts, and ask Anakin whether or not he felt like having a shower before you took him out to do his shopping.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've never been able to wrench the holiday season into a story I actually happen to be writing close to Christmas, so just humour me, okay? I didn't set this fic during winter for no reason. 
> 
> Wouldn't it be funny if Reader gave Luke a cute little card with holly and elves and shit on it, and then when he opened it, it just said "I'm fucking your dad" in really fancy cursive?
> 
> (She's not going to do that, lol.)


	13. A Nice Time *

"Did you think about what you're going to tell Leia?" 

"I'm going to tell her it's fine— she'll be disappointed if I don't."

That made you smile, but you didn't say anything else, at least for the moment. You were sitting on the floor in Anakin's living room right now, rubbing lotion onto what was left of his legs. A couple of days had passed since Leia had made her request; in that time, you'd found that the dynamic between you and Anakin _had_ changed, although maybe a bit less than an outside observer would have anticipated. He was slightly more subdued, and his characteristic bursts of impoliteness came a bit less frequently than before; however, you hadn't yet exchanged even two words about what you'd done together.

It was a lot like it had been after he'd first kissed you, really— there seemed to be no need to bring it up, because you were sure you knew that there was very little chance of it ever happening again. It didn't stop you from looking at him a bit differently; it also didn't stop him from looking back at you the same way, but acting on your impulses like that for a second time was decidedly out of the question. You didn't have to say it to understand it, and so you didn't.

"I think Leia might be right," you finally told him, taking your time as you spread a thick, pleasantly-scented dollop of lotion onto his left stump. This wasn't the medicated kind of lotion; it was just a moisturizer. It contained nothing in the way of antibiotics, and its application was for the sake of Anakin's comfort more than anything else. "It's good for you to spend time with your kids," you went on, "and I didn't want to do Christmas alone with Luke in the apartment anyway."

"Still arguing?" he asked, looking over your head at the television. 

"I don't think we're going to stop until either he gets rid of the car or we pay off the debt," you said. You probably shouldn't have, but you'd essentially resigned yourself to that reality not long after this whole fiasco had started. You were already sick of getting paid and having nothing to show for it; tired of spending your evenings alone while Luke stayed late at work, or fiddled with his Charger. Fed up, too, with being ignored; passed by consistently in favour of Luke's right hand because you had the gall to be hurt by his choices.

Anakin was quiet; shifted in his seat. You realized then that your palm had worked its way further up the inside of his thigh than it actually needed to go. That caused you to stop what you were doing, take a breath, and retrieve some more lotion. After that, you started with his other leg... this time making sure your hand only went where it was supposed to. You heard him take in a deep breath of his own, which made you look up at his face, only to find that he was now staring right back down at you. His legs were as tense as you'd ever known them to be.

You paused what you were doing one more time. "I'm sorry," you said. 

He seemed as if he might be about to respond, but he didn't; looked up at the television again instead, although he didn't relax. You turned your attention once more toward your job, and all of a sudden your mind pulled you back in time to the beginning of the week— back to the night of the snowstorm. The act of applying the lotion to his legs just then only made you think about sitting on his lap; thinking about sitting on his lap made you think about kissing him. Of course, that only led to thoughts of fucking him, which (even though it hadn't taken all that much time to do) had been a supremely satisfying, _satiating_ experience... whether you wanted to acknowledge it or not. 

"...Does that feel okay?" you asked, your throat— for some reason— suddenly feeling incredibly dry.

"It's fine," he answered quietly, not daring to look away from whatever program it was that he wasn't actually watching.

"I'm going to go to the kitchen to set up your coffee for the morning," you said, rising to your feet and rubbing the excess lotion into the backs of your own hands. Again, it wasn't medicated— there was no need to waste it, particularly since it smelled nice.

"Alright," he said, still without so much as glancing in your direction. 

You nodded, and went off to do just what you'd said; not long after that you would get ready to leave, because it was getting late.

Over the past few days, you had tried to continue to tell yourself that you'd just been lonely and drunk that other night; that you'd have done what you did with just about anyone who had ventured to show you a bit of affection in the absence of what you were sorely missing from Luke. The mere hint of a notion of that not being the case— that you were, for whatever reason, specifically drawn to his father— jarred you. It jarred you as much as the persistence of the memory of that first kiss Anakin had offered you, and it was even more difficult to purge from your thoughts.

You drove home slowly that night, watching the snow sparkle under the street lights, and the already-dim sunlight fade away. The sky darkened and it darkened quickly, until it was as black as the growing centre of that crack in your bedroom wall— the one into which you'd found yourself staring all too often recently. 

For years, you had always tried your very best to refrain from letting your life at work and your life at home become too enmeshed with one another. Given the nature of your current job, though, that was beginning to feel impossible. 

Chiding yourself for not being prescient enough to anticipate the sort of dilemma you were facing now, you hoped that Luke might have decided to work late again that night. You needed some time alone to clear your head, and you knew you wouldn't get it if he happened to be at home when you got there.

Even if all he was going to do was ignore you.

...

You were still asleep when you felt a hint of warm breath on the back of your neck. It was accompanied by the tickle of soft hair brushing up against your skin, and a whisper in your ear whose tone was both comforting and familiar, although you couldn't make out the words being said just then. You didn't turn over right away or even open your eyes, but you were well aware of the fact that the source of those indiscernible words knew you were awake.

Very soon, there was a hand on your leg; it was warm with calloused fingertips and blunt nails, and it moved unsubtly along the inside of your thigh as it journeyed toward its intended destination. At the same time, your back was enveloped by the heat of a body you knew as well as the voice in your ear, although it seemed like it had been forever since you'd last felt it press into you like this.

"Luke?" you asked, because although you knew precisely what was going on, you were somewhat incredulous of it. Why was he doing this now? Not that you were going to complain, exactly, but...

"It's me," he confirmed, as that hand of his found what it was looking for, and moved in such a way that it made you jump. _"Wow,"_ he marvelled, "what were _you_ dreaming about?"

Truthfully you could hardly remember, although whatever it was, it had certainly excited you. "I'm not sure," you said, shifting for the sole purpose of giving him better access to what he wanted.

"Whatever it was, I like what it did to you." You could hear his smile come through in his voice; that made you turn over to steal a kiss from him... at which point you received, indirectly, an explanation as to his unforeseen expression of affection.

"You're drunk," you said, having smelled whatever it was he'd been imbibing on his breath.

"Only a bit," he half-conceded, moving to kiss at your ear. His hand was still between your legs; you couldn't help but relish the warmth and texture of it. You'd always loved Luke's hands.

"I thought you were working," you told him, rolling your hips into his touch as your own physiology did the work of fighting your irritation for you.

"I _was_ at work— one of the guys brought something in, 'cause it's so close to Christmas." Neither of you was dressed; as he pushed his body into yours, you could easily feel that he was just as worked-up as you already were. 

"Oh." You weren't sure whether to feel grateful or annoyed. Surely he wouldn't be doing this if he was sober, but if being tipsy was what it took to get him to give you a bit of positive attention these days, then were you really going to argue? You'd already spent weeks lamenting the fact that he seemed to want nothing to do with you; if you rejected him now, he likely wasn't going to bother with this the next time he was feeling amorous, drunk or not. "Tell me what you're thinking about," you said next, deciding not to pick a fight.

"I'm thinking about how long it's been since we had a nice time together," he answered, and he heaved himself up onto his hands and knees to start sloppily kissing his way down your body. Once he was steady, his hand went back to work; you couldn't suppress the sound that escaped you as he slid a single finger into you with ease; teased you in just the right spot. Again, you'd always loved that his hands reflected his profession— the way they felt was magnificently unique, no matter what they happened to be doing. 

"It has been a while, hasn't it?" you said, trying your best to sound nonchalant. There was no way he hadn't understood just what he'd been doing by withholding his affection from you for so long, but again, you didn't feel that this was the right time to argue with him.

He didn't respond with words; instead, he continued with his mouth until his lips met his hand. Withdrawing his finger, he went to work with his tongue instead, causing you to pull your legs apart for him. He was more than a little bit uncoordinated right now, but that didn't affect his proficiency as he crawled right up between your thighs, and began a long-overdue exploration of your present enthusiasm.

You trembled and writhed as you lay on your back; one of your hands shot down to tug at his hair. That made him wrap his arm around your leg, and turn his head to the side to nip at your flesh. You squealed and he laughed before going back to what he'd been doing before. You closed your eyes, tangling your fingers up in that nest of lovely blonde you once thought you'd never be able to get enough of. The way he sucked and licked and even nibbled betrayed how very well he knew you and what you loved; at that moment, your anxiety, hurt, and anger were relegated to the very back of your mind: Turned by Luke's hands and mouth into ominous, well-hidden shadows; still lurking behind the way he was making you feel, but also graciously invisible... at least for the time being.

Soon (but not too soon), he pulled his head away in favour of travelling back up the length of your body. He leaned down to kiss you as he suspended himself above you with those deceptively strong, wiry arms in which you used to adore finding yourself wrapped up. When he grinned lopsidedly at you, you couldn't help but smile back; he was beautiful. You'd always thought so. Both briefly and utterly involuntarily, your mind took you back to Anakin's kitchen; to the old photo from under his fridge that he'd hidden away from you seemingly out of a sense of misplaced shame. 

Had you found the smile in that old picture so charming because it so closely resembled Luke's, or did you find Luke so charming right now because he looked so very much like his dad?

You pushed that thought out of your mind; told it to fuck right off, in fact, because it had no place in your bed at home. It had no place anywhere, really, but especially not here and you knew it. 

"Luke," you said, both in the interest of maintaining his attention and pulling yourself back into the present.

"Tell me what you want," he smiled, reaching down and taking hold of himself so that he could tease your entrance with the prominent manifestation of his own desire.

"You _know_ what I want," you breathed, and you raised a hand to touch his neck. You loved his neck as much as you loved his hands.

"I want you to tell me anyway— you know how much I like hearing you ask for it."

 _"Fuck me, Luke,"_ you conceded, which was a small price to pay for what he was offering you right now. It shouldn't have felt like he was being generous; his behaviour toward you had been atrocious for far too long, but again, that was something you could consider later. 

Right now, you were just happy to have him.

He granted your request as eagerly as he'd ever done anything; his thrusts were rough and haphazard, but that didn't bother you even a little bit. You snaked your hands around his back and pulled him in close to you, sighing and moaning into his ear as he drunkenly, _exquisitely_ ravaged you. Memories of his father tried to push their way back into your mind as you reflected on how very different it felt to fuck each of them, but you cast those away in favour of focusing on the moment you were in.

You were successful in that endeavour until you pulled one of your hands back from around him to touch his face. The backs of your fingers came just close enough to your nose that all of a sudden, your sense of smell was overtaken by the scent of Anakin's lotion. Part of you regretted rubbing the remainder of it into your own skin at all; the rest of you kept your hand still for a moment so that you could relish the memory of applying it to his legs.

Shamefully, that made you clench yourself around Luke even more tightly, and force your hips upward to aid him in burying himself as deeply inside you as you both wanted him to be. His breath hitched, you cried out, and he lost himself entirely, rutting sharply until he knew he had nothing left to give you. 

It was then that he rolled off of you, breathing heavily as he stared up at the ceiling. He looked more content than you'd seen him in a very long time. You couldn't discern how you felt, but whatever it was, it wasn't bad.

"You know I love you, don't you?" he asked, although he didn't turn his gaze in your direction. 

You did look over at him. "Of course I know— I love you too, Luke. I always have."

That response seemed to grant him a sense of relief, if only for the moment. You supposed that was all that mattered right now: A good fuck wasn't going to fix your problems, and nothing could change the fact that you'd been thinking about his dad in bed. You could still remember chastising him for bringing up his father while the two of you were supposed to have been being intimate; you supposed you were the one who ought to be reprimanded now.

By the time you were finished contemplating, you noticed that his breathing had changed, and his eyes had fallen shut. He still looked happy, but he was also fast asleep; by morning, you feared the two of you would be back to expressing toward one another the same old quiet disdain that had caused you to go so long without what you'd just shared.

You decided not to worry about that for now, though; rolled over to rest your head tentatively on his chest, because you didn't want to look at the crack beside the closet tonight. Against both your own better judgement and your conscience, you placed your hand right next to your face— close enough to smell Anakin's lotion on your skin.

The dream you'd been in the midst of before Luke had woken you still escaped your memory, but to your own guilt and dismay, you had a very distinct feeling that if you'd been forced to guess what it was about, you'd have been able to do so correctly.

You closed your own eyes then, hoping that unconsciousness might be kind enough to take you before you had a chance to think too much more— about Luke, his father, your bank balance, or anything else at all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My old roomie wasn't a mechanic but he was a roofer, and he used to come home late and drunk basically every night lmfao. He moved across the country with his dog a couple years ago; the dog was old by then, and has since died. I still have a bowl with her name on it in my hall closet because I used to look after her for him even after we abandoned the nasty wreck of the apartment we shared together, and I cannot bring myself to throw it out. Miss you, Miss Daisy. I'll always remember when you were a puppy and pissed all the way down the back stairs.
> 
> [/pointless anecdote]
> 
> Anyway, drunk Luke is a real fucking charmer, eh? Going to try to take a break from this story for a day or two so I can at least start to finish some other stuff, but I'll be back to it very soon; it's (clearly) addictive as hell to work on. Thanks for reading it— I can't stop being shocked that anyone but me even likes it. :)


	14. Tune-Up

You shouldn't have asked; shouldn't have said a word about it. When you'd seen him try to pick up that wrench only for it to slip through his hand, you should have walked out of the garage, started a pot of coffee, and never brought it up again. You hadn't, though— instead, you'd been stupid enough to ask him what he was up to; what was going on. You had been returning his snow shovel to the garage after clearing the sidewalk in front of the house when you'd found him; putting the shovel back should have been the end of it. You should have kept your mouth shut.

You'd failed to do so, however, and now Anakin was holed up in his room while you sat in the kitchen, not knowing what to do about it. Usually you'd have done nothing; however, you couldn't shake the feeling that this time, it really was your fault that he was upset. You'd been insensitive, and although you hadn't recognized it at first, you did now... and you were desperate to try and figure out a way to fix it.

"Damnit, Anakin," you muttered in spite of yourself, picking at a plate of Roma tomatoes doused in oil and balsamic vinegar. You'd put it together for him prior to his most recent retreat, but you figured, now, that you might as well eat it— you highly suspected that he was no longer going to (and anyway, it wasn't Hamburger Helper). Again, you were chiding yourself for having said anything to him at all about those damn tools in the first place, but what was done was done; now you had to figure out what to do next.

All you'd asked him, really, was what he'd been doing— if he intended on fixing something; if he needed any help. That had been after you'd watched him drop the old wrench he'd been trying to turn over in his hand. He must not have noticed you witnessing his inability to get a grip on it, because he'd jumped at the sound of your voice. _"I'm not doing anything,"_ he'd said to you, followed by _"Fuck off."_

Before today, he hadn't told you to fuck off for what felt like a while— since the night of the snow storm, to your recollection.

With a heavy sigh, you pushed the tomatoes away, and got up from your seat. You'd never ventured to follow him any other time he'd run off to the back of the house, but again, this time you felt at least partially responsible for having driven him there. You recalled what he'd told you about teaching Luke to work on cars; that all he'd ever done was stand behind his son and tell him what to do. Of course he hadn't been about to use that wrench— he likely hadn't used one at all since before his kids had been born; if fixing things was something he used to enjoy or even take pride in, then his reaction to your query made perfect sense.

Having reached his bedroom door, you raised a hand; knocked gently. "Anakin?" you called tentatively. "I'm sorry— you know I didn't mean anything by it."

There was no answer; you couldn't even smell any fresh cigarette smoke. You stood and waited, but nothing happened. You thought about going back into the kitchen— about finding some other task to occupy your time until he decided to come back out on his own, but something (likely guilt shot through with a dash of concern) stopped you; made you stay. 

You didn't knock again, because you knew very well that he'd heard you the first time, but you did try calling his name once more.

He still didn't say a word.

Part of you started to worry, although about what, you couldn't quite put your finger on. There wasn't much for him to do in there except smoke himself to death, although the fact that he didn't even seem to be trying to do that nagged at you. When Anakin stormed off, typically he'd have a few cigarettes while muttering to himself about how annoyed he was; soon, though, he'd exit the room as if nothing had happened.

Something about this felt different, and that might have been the reason you dared to begin to push open the door. You knew you probably shouldn't, but really, his wellbeing was your responsibility— as was his current mood, if indeed it had been your lack of foresight that had caused it to turn sour.

You started as you entered, "Anakin, I—"

"What the fuck do you want?" he interrupted, although his voice was quiet. He was laying fully in-tact on his bed atop the blankets, staring at the ceiling. He didn't look at you.

"I wanted to see if you were alright," you answered, still not having fully opened the door.

He only snorted at that.

"...You know it's kind of my job, don't you?" you asked, hesitantly stepping all the way into the room.

"You're here to do the things I can't do anymore," he said, lifting his arm so that he could take a close look at his own right hand. As he opened and closed it slowly before his own eyes, he added, "And to make sure my fucking skin doesn't fall off."

"Maybe," you conceded, "but that doesn't mean I don't care about how you feel, too." You paused. "...I shouldn't have asked about what you were doing; I should have thought about it first. I didn't mean to—"

"Stop," he said, having set his arm back down beside himself. 

"I just want you to know that I—"

_"Stop."_

You did stop, but you also looked around the room at that point. It was a relatively spacious room, although it was sparsely furnished with only a bed, two nightstands, and a chest of drawers. The window was on the far side of the bed; the side opposite the one on which Anakin typically slept— the one you yourself had woken up on not that long ago. Your mind travelled back to that morning momentarily; recalled the way it had felt to put your arm around him, and kiss his shoulder. 

You must have been staring at him again, much like you'd been that other morning; you only knew because he asked, "What the fuck are you looking at?" as he apparently gave up on laying down. He heaved himself up into a seated position then, and twisted his lower body to swing his legs off of the edge of the bed. He sat and glared up at you expectantly.

"I'm sorry," you said. "If you want me to just leave you alone for a while, I—"

He sighed and shook his head. He seemed to do that a lot. "No— no, you don't have to go." He reached for the pack of cigarettes he kept by the bed; held it in his hook as he used his hand to pluck a smoke out of the open top. He set the pack down, leaned over to retrieve one of his matches, and lit it up. As he inhaled, you paced carefully up to the edge of the bed. He seemed to motion with his head for you to sit, so you did. The mattress was exactly as plush and comfortable as you remembered it being.

Because you weren't sure what else to say, you started to ask him if he wanted to go down to the basement with you to start the laundry in a little bit, but he didn't let you finish that thought.

"Sometimes I get lost in my own head," he admitted abruptly. His concession seemed to come from nowhere. 

"...What do you mean?" you asked, somewhat taken aback by even that level of forthcoming. Anakin never told you much of anything, least of all about how he felt, unless he was acutely angry.

"I mean I've been thinking a lot lately about things I haven't done for a long time," he clarified, once again to your surprise.

"Oh," you said. "You mean things like using the tools in the garage?"

"Yeah— other things, too, but today it was that." He took a long drag from his smoke; exhaled slowly. "You remember that picture you found under the fridge?"

You did, but you were shocked that he was the one bringing it up. "I do," you said, because how could you forget having seen him so happy? The smile on his face had stuck fast in your mind not unlike one of Luke's frozen, rusted bolts, whether you'd wanted it to or not.

"My wife took that picture," he revealed. "It wasn't too long before I left for Iraq. She was pregnant with Luke and Leia then; I'd just come in from tuning up the car for her." He smiled thinly, and looked down at the floor. "It was a shitty car; I wanted it to work in case she needed to drive herself to the hospital while I was gone."

You smiled, too. "I bet she appreciated that." Luke had never told you much about his mother because he'd never known her; even just a bit of insight into the kind of person she'd been interested you.

"She was always doing things for me," he said. "Too many things, really... but that was just who she was. I was always trying to make it up to her— even back then, I wasn't all that much fun to be around."

You couldn't help but chuckle at that. "She must have thought you were," you pointed out, studying his face as he stared down at the carpet. She wouldn't have married him and had children with him if she hadn't wanted to be with him.

He glanced back over at you then. "I always expected her to figure out I was an asshole and leave— she was smart; too smart to be with someone like me, anyway."

"You're not all that bad," you assured him, not untruthfully. He'd never given you quite so clear a glimpse into the way he felt about himself before; you supposed he'd felt that way for a very long time— longer than he'd been without his limbs. That surprised you a bit, but you didn't say so. 

He laughed. "This time I _know_ you're just being kind," he said, and that caused you to have to try and keep your face from growing hot. You couldn't.

Looking away from him, you shook your head. "...I'm still not that kind," you told him, although after that you weren't sure what else to say.

He must not have been sure either, because he fell silent; went back to smoking and looking straight ahead of himself. Finally, "It hurt when she died— it didn't seem fair."

"It _wasn't_ fair," you said. "Nobody should lose someone that way." Very carefully, "After she died, did you really never...?"

He turned his head, and gave you a look that told you he thought you were being an idiot. "They'd barely finished sewing me up; I had bigger things to worry about than who I was going to fuck."

"I meant after that," you said. "After you and your kids were home, and things started to get easier."

He shrugged. "I didn't want anyone else— I didn't stop missing her; I couldn't. Anyway, who would have had me?" He stopped, seeming to think. "...Part of me is glad she never had to see me this way, really. I know she'd have put up with it, but..." There he went, trailing off again. Maybe he'd revealed more to you than he'd intended. In fact, you were quite sure he had.

"If she loved you— and it sounds like she did— then I really don't think she'd have cared about what you were missing when you came home. I think she'd have just been glad you came home at all." 

"Maybe. I wouldn't have wanted her to be miserable taking care of me, though; wouldn't have wanted her to feel stuck." He put out his cigarette then; he seemed to have accidentally let it burn right down to its filter while he'd been talking with you. "If she were still here, she'd probably be doing your job right now, except that no one would be paying her to do it. It wouldn't have been fair; she always deserved better than me, even when I was at my best."

Since he wouldn't have been able to feel it if you'd tried to touch his hand, you touched his leg instead; rested your palm on his thigh. You would suppose, later on, that you could have touched his shoulder, but that didn't seem to occur to you just then.

"What are you doing?" he asked, sounding genuinely curious.

"Trying to make you feel better," you said, not unlike he had when he'd explained to you why he'd kissed you.

You both must have caught the subtle irony inherent in your exchange, because you each laughed that time, loudly and simultaneously.

"I'm sorry," he said. "I shouldn't make you sit through—"

"It's okay," you interrupted him. It really was. This might have been the first time since starting to work with Anakin— _know_ him— that you'd ever felt more than tenuously connected to him; even that night on the couch, he'd seemed a bit farther away than you'd have expected.

You squeezed his leg with your fingertips, and noticed that it had happened yet again: Not unlike on the night of that snow storm, you found that you and Anakin had ended up closer to one another than either of you really needed to be. You were very suddenly reminded of your hand's journey up the inside of his thigh; of the scent of his lotion. 

You weren't drunk this time, and that was when you realized you didn't have to be: Before you knew it, you'd pressed your mouths together again; unlike before, you had most certainly participated in leaning in. 

It wasn't the wanton, open-mouthed probing from when you'd been sitting naked on his lap; however, it also wasn't the chaste, nervous peck from the kitchen. Instead it was something in between; something that both felt better and lasted longer than it ought to have.

"Why do you keep letting me do that?" he asked, when you finally separated from one another. Your hand hadn't come off of his leg.

"Probably for the same reason you keep doing it," you said, although even you weren't sure what you meant by that.

He cleared his throat, and moved to reach for another cigarette. "You were right— you were right when you said we can't—"

"I know," you interrupted, partly because you wanted to spare him from having to finish that sentence; partly because you didn't want to hear the rest of what you knew he was going to say. Reluctantly, you withdrew your hand from his leg; folded it up in your lap instead. 

"...You mentioned the laundry before," he said, looking as though he might be about to hoist himself to his feet. 

"I did," you confirmed for him. "Do you want to come downstairs and help—"

He nodded, then stood; just as you predicted he would. His unlit smoke was still pinched between his mechanical fingers. "Yeah— yeah, okay. Let's get started, then."

"Okay." 

You stood up too, and the two of you exited the room together without saying another word.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I... have absolutely nothing to say about this chapter other than that I like it. Hope you do, too.
> 
> I need someone to make 'this' Anakin into an action figure for me, lol. I need all of them as figures, actually— from this one to the US Army one to the fat one to the one that plays hockey. I just want them all. All the Anis. *sigh*


	15. Lucky *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fair warning: This chapter is ultimately pretty goddamn depressing, or at least it is to me. If you're already having a bad day, you maybe might want to save it for later? I dunno. I'm sorry.

"Anakin, I thought you said we couldn't—"

_"I know what I said."_

You were standing in Anakin's basement near the washing machine. Your hands, fingers spread wide, were pressed up against a painted, cinder block wall. The air was cool, and there was so much snow piled up on the ground outside that you couldn't see through the high, narrow windows set into the heavy stones. It wasn't nighttime, and you weren't stuck here— in fact, it had barely been an hour since you'd sat on the edge of Anakin's bed and spoken to him about his wife. Barely an hour since you'd kissed him yet again.

His right arm was wrapped around you from behind, while the hook at the end of his left trailed up the outside of your thigh. His shorts were open and he was buried inside you, moving as rhythmically as he could manage. He'd already nosed his way past your hair to nip at your ear; he was breathing heavily, but not so much that he seemed to feel the need to stop himself from biting you. Your own pants were pushed down around your ankles. Neither of you had removed your shirt, but he'd long since slid his hand up beneath yours. You wished he could feel your skin with his fingertips, although not being able to certainly didn't seem to bother him right now.

This time, it had started with the laundry: You'd just pulled a load out of the drier that had been sitting there since the day before; you'd been folding the clothes, and Anakin had been sorting them into little piles. You'd come down with a new hamper full of things ready to be washed, but had wanted to clear out the drier before starting with it.

You never quite got the chance to complete the task.

You'd both been silent for a while, just folding and sorting, until out of nowhere (and with barely any intonation) he'd asked if it would be alright to pose a question. You, of course, had told him that would be just fine.

 _"If you weren't just being kind, then why?"_ he'd asked.

 _"Why what?"_ you'd asked back, although you were absolutely certain you already knew what he was talking about. 

_"Why did you fuck me on the couch?"_ he'd clarified next, to which you'd taken a deep breath and fallen silent.

You'd stared at each other somewhat uncomfortably for a few very long moments after that; soon, you'd stepped up closely to one another. You had told him next that you'd just wanted him; that there was no more or less to it than that, which was true, as far as you could tell. Certainly, having been left hurt and lonesome by his son was a large part of it; however, all things considered, your interactions with Luke hadn't been altogether too bad over the course of the past several days. You hadn't spoken with him extensively since the night he'd come home drunk and horny, but you also hadn't argued; hadn't outright rejected one another.

The only explanation you could think of for the way you still felt was that there was something about Anakin specifically; something that drew you to him in spite of his age or your ethics or anything else... and so that was what you'd told him, although in not quite so many words.

Knowing that you wanted him seemed to make him want you in return all that much more; without saying anything, he'd leaned in to kiss you again. As he did, he'd cupped your face with that miraculously advanced myoelectric hand his prosthetist had recently recalibrated for him. You pictured the inside of it while he stroked your face with its thumb; considered how incredible it was that the sheer power of technology could give him the ability to touch you that way. Whatever his hands happened to be made of, though, you had a distinct (and distressingly shameful) feeling that you'd have enjoyed being touched by Anakin no matter what.

Luke's hands might have been warm and coarse in a way that made you melt beneath their touch, but the selflessness of his father's caress may very well have been unrivalled.

You didn't necessarily like that you felt that way, of course, but you did... and now here you were in the basement with Anakin, doing what you knew you shouldn't, but what you also couldn't seem to keep yourself from submitting to.

He'd started to tremble by then; you knew because of how closely he was pressed up against you. Again, his hands never trembled because they couldn't; however, the rest of him surely could, and it was then that you started to worry he was over-exerting himself.

Taking one hand away from the wall, you reached up behind your own head to touch his hair. It had a tendency toward looking a bit wiry, but it didn't feel like that at all; you already knew how soft it was, in marked contrast to the rest of his body. His breaths had started to come less evenly; they were ragged now, and he'd ceased his biting.

 _"Anakin,"_ you said, "are you—"

 _"Fuck!"_ he gasped, and you both almost faltered. He thrust forward sharply; buried his face in the crook of your neck as you felt him release, again with the sort of force you might only have expected if he'd been half the age he actually was. You shouted, too, even though you didn't mean to. 

For several moments, he didn't move and neither did you; his body continued to quiver as he finished. You gathered his hair in your hand then; squeezed it gently as he continued to try and catch his breath.

It wasn't long before you realized that he couldn't. 

"Anakin," you started again, "are you okay?"

He couldn't rightly answer you, and by then he'd begun to wheeze.

"I'm going to turn around— try to stay on your feet." Although you were somewhat unsteady yourself (the spot he'd been hitting from the position you'd assumed together had been exquisitely perfect), you shifted to face him. You tried, but were unable to suppress the whimper that escaped your lips as he was forced by your own motion to pull out of you; however, you were far more concerned with his wellbeing now than you were about the way you felt. 

When you looked at his face, you could tell right away that he was in dire need of his inhaler. Luckily, he'd brought it downstairs with him (he brought it nearly everywhere), but before you could get to it, you had to sit him down. You looked around the space in desperation; fortunately there was a kitchen chair— one just like the ones at the table upstairs— only a few feet away.

"If I hold you up," you said, "can you make it to the chair? It's just a few steps to your left." 

Still gasping and wheezing, he nodded, and so you slid your hands beneath his arms; bore as much of his weight as you could as you shuffled along with him over to the seat. Your pants were still down around your ankles, but you could move well enough to assist him; besides that, you didn't care about what you looked like right now. 

Once you'd lowered him down and he was seated as comfortably as he was going to be, you tugged your pants back up your legs, not bothering to fasten them as you lunged toward the washing machine. He'd placed his inhaler atop its lid when he'd entered the room; you took it in your hand, and rushed back over to him. As you knelt beside him, you placed a hand on his back to encourage him to sit up straight; when he did so as best he could, you put the inhaler to his lips and pressed down on the little plunger with your finger. He sucked the medicine into his lungs; held his breath a moment, and exhaled. After that, you repeated the process once more.

He coughed; even sputtered, but soon he was able to take a series of deep (albeit shuddering) breaths. You stayed by his side, hand still on his back. You clutched the inhaler tightly in your opposite hand, grateful for its presence; glad that it had worked.

Finally— when he seemed to have adequately calmed himself and evened out his respiration— he looked up at you tentatively. "I'm sorry," he said. "I figured I could— I mean, I thought—"

"It's okay," you told him. _"It's okay._ I shouldn't have let you—"

"No— no, it was worth it; I just—"

"Stop for now," you said gently, having begun to stroke his back. He did stop; if you hadn't known better, you might have thought he was about to cry. 

You both went quiet. You remained knelt beside him, rubbing his back, until he finally seemed to decide that he was ready to rise to his feet again. You stood up with him, trying to get a good look at his face; however, he kept it turned away from you now, as though he didn't want you to look at him. You very much wanted to look at him, of course, but you weren't about to press him.

"I'm going to start up the laundry now," you said instead, as you each fastened your pants (his possessed only a zipper and a clasp; with his hand, he could fairly easily accomplish the task for himself). You could feel him dripping into what you were wearing beneath yours; if anything, it was a pleasant sensation... but you didn't say anything about that just then. 

Still without looking at you, he answered simply and quietly, "Okay," and slowly backed away. "I... I think I need a cigarette— I'm going to go back upstairs to the kitchen." You couldn't recall him ever having sounded less self-assured. Irrepressible guilt coiled tightly around your insides; you hadn't meant to make him feel even worse than when he'd been unable to handle his old wrench, but you had a feeling that you'd done so anyway.

"That's fine," you said, trying as best you could to offer him a smile. "I won't be too long."

He nodded, turned, and began to carefully ascend the stairs leading up to the main floor of the house.

You started to load his clothes into the washing machine, wondering (although not for the first time) if someone else might not be better suited to the job of helping Luke's dad.

...

"You know this'll all work out, don't you? I mean... it's just _money."_

"For fuck's sake, Luke, it's a _lot_ of money. D'you know my debit card got declined at the store last week? _Declined._ We were lucky it was only one day 'til payday."

You were at home sprawled on the sofa beside Luke; it was very late in the evening now, and you were starting to think you'd made yet another mistake: As it turned out, whoever had brought the liquor into Luke's work the other day had brought more than just a single bottle— they had, apparently, brought enough for _everyone_ at the garage to take some of it home with them. At first you'd been grateful; just happy to have something nice, but soon after you'd begun drinking together, you and Luke had come upon the subject of what had been driving you apart.

"Getting paid the next day made it better, though, right?" he asked, with an irreverence that made you want to throttle him. "Nobody starved. We aren't getting evicted."

You sat up taller in your seat. You'd each had quite a bit to drink by then, and both your movements and your speech were less-than-steady. You looked over at Luke in irritation. "That's a pretty low bar, don't you think? Not starving; not evicted?"

He rolled his eyes at you. "We have what we need— do you have any idea how many people in the world _don't_ have what they need? If anything, we're _lucky."_

"'Lucky'," you echoed. _"Lucky?_ Goddamn it, Luke, you knew we had plans for more than this!"

"I don't see what the big deal is," he said next, straightening himself up, too. "I got something I've wanted since I was a kid, and we still have all the time in the world to—"

"No we don't!" you shouted, whether you should have yelled or not. Luke's hopeful optimism was something you had always loved about him, but as far as your debt was concerned, it infuriated you. "You remember what we talked about, don't you? A house? _Kids?_ What if I'm too fucking old to even _have_ babies by the time we pay off your damn car and save up enough for a down payment on a place to raise them?!" 

You sank back into the sofa after that, feeling defeated. Just saying those words out loud was almost enough to push you to the verge of tears. You'd already had an awful day, frankly, having upset Anakin to the point of retreat two separate times. There was certainly no one you could talk to about _that_ , and now that you were here, you were suddenly being forced to think yet again about the fact that your dream of a home and family with Luke was more likely than not slipping right out of your grasp. It was no wonder you'd wound up growing close to someone else— everything you'd wanted since meeting Luke was being wrenched away from you. Like it or not, you spent more time with his dad than you did with anyone else.

Of course, today, even being with Anakin that way had ceased to seem even remotely advisable... not that exchanging affection with him had ever been the right thing to do.

You couldn't stop yourself anymore; between the liquor and the perceived hopelessness and the immense guilt, there was nothing you could do except to look away from Luke, put your head in your hands, and finally start to cry. You didn't like to cry, especially not in front of other people; it felt to you as if you'd been engaging in that particular activity too often recently. 

To his credit, Luke at least didn't take long to notice— soon, he'd slid sloppily over to you on the couch; put an arm around your shoulder. "Hey," he said. "Hey, I'm sorry— I'm just trying to look at the positive side of—"

"There's nothing positive about this!" you sobbed. "Nothing!" You wanted to add that you thought he had wanted the same things you wanted— that you felt misled and used and disregarded; however, you didn't feel like re-hashing arguments you'd already had... particularly not when you were drunk.

That must have been why you wrenched yourself out of Luke's grasp at that point, heaved yourself up from the sofa, and made a retreat of your own.

"Where are you going?" asked Luke, looking as dejected as ever. "Why don't we—"

 _"Not now,"_ you said decidedly, as you dragged yourself down the hall toward your bedroom. 

Once inside, you shut the door behind you, fell onto the bed, and buried your face in your pillow. You were quite sure Luke would follow you; however, you hoped he wouldn't try to do so altogether too soon.

Drinking tonight may very well have been a mistake, but at the very least, being intoxicated gave you a modicum of hope that you might not remember entirely too much about how you felt right now when you finally woke up in the morning.


	16. Pine Sap

"Is this one okay?"

"Fuck, I have no idea. You know this isn't for me, don't you?"

Months ago, you might have sighed at that... but right now you just laughed. Of course Anakin didn't give a shit about what his Christmas tree looked like— the only reason he was buying one in the first place was to make Leia happy. Fortunately for her (and for you and Anakin), trees happened to be available at the grocery store, to which you had just paid a quick, late afternoon visit. There were rows upon rows of them leaned up against the side of the building at the edge of the slushy, ice-laden parking lot; they were all tied up and ready to be loaded onto the roofs of cars. Anakin had already paid for one inside along with the rest of his things; all he had to do now was decide which one of them he wanted.

"I know it's not for you," you said, "but you're the one who's going to have to look at it every day— so shouldn't you at least like the one you choose?"

"It's a dead tree," he retorted. "Dead trees are all the same."

"That's not true. Some of them are tall, some of them are fluffy— some of them kind of look more blue than green." You walked up and down the lineup; even you had to admit that you were happy to get to help pick one. You and Luke didn't have the space for a real Christmas tree in your apartment, so you'd usually just put a little plastic one on top of the coffee table... and this year it didn't seem likely you would even end up doing that. "Also," you added, "they're not _dead._ You still have to water them."

"So they're _dying,_ then," he corrected himself, stepping up carefully to where you were standing, which was right in front of the tree you liked best thus far. Anakin was already smoking a cigarette (he always lit one up immediately after exiting the store), although he didn't look as surly as he sounded. He must have registered that you were particularly fond of the one in front of you, because he asked, "You like that one?"

After taking a moment to both think and glance around at the others, you nodded. "I do like it," you said. It was taller than Anakin himself, it looked more green than blue, and from what you could tell it didn't have any bald patches or brown needles. It was lovely; just the kind you'd have picked for yourself, if you happened to live somewhere with enough room to put it.

"Then that one's fine," he said, as he exhaled some smoke. You could have sworn that there was a hint of self-satisfaction in his voice, something that told you he understood very well the little speck of joy he'd just bestowed upon you. You wondered if he intended it to be a Christmas gift.

You looked over at him with a smile (maybe a more enthusiastic one than you'd intended), thanked him, and picked the thing up. Not without a bit of awkwardness, you went on to drag it over to your car. It wasn't heavy, really, and thanks to Anakin's parking pass, you didn't have too far to go. 

Shoving it up onto the roof and fastening it onto the rack with the two long, elastic cords you'd brought with you was a bit of a different matter, but even that didn't end up being too much of a challenge. Anakin stood by and continued to smoke while you worked; he didn't have to say anything for you to know he wished he could have done it himself. It had been days, now, since he'd lost his breath in the basement, and as always, neither one of you had brought it up with the other. Also once again, though, the physical intimacy you'd managed to share prior to his coming in need of your help seemed to have somewhat subdued him.

"Damn it," you said once you'd secured the tree, because there was pine sap all over your hands.

"Rubbing alcohol," Anakin informed you, without enough context for you to understand what he was getting at.

"What?"

"Rubbing alcohol— or cooking oil." He gestured at your hands.

"Oh. That'll get this off?"

"Yeah," he said. "Pine boughs make great bedding, but they're sticky as fuck. I used to get that shit all over my face and hands during infantry training."

"You mean in the army?" Anakin nearly never talked about the time he'd spent in the military.

He nodded. "Camping is a lot more fun with an M-16."

"I thought you flew helicopters," you said.

"I did, eventually— but everyone has to start somewhere, don't they?" He tossed his cigarette to the ground then, and made his way to the passenger's side door of the car, which was already unlocked. 

After seeing that he got in safely (the parking lot was more than a bit slick thanks to all of that ice and slush), you entered the vehicle as well, eager to turn on the engine and warm up your hands. Aside from covered in tree sap, they were cold— you hadn't had enough foresight to bring a set of gloves with you to work that day.

On the way back to Anakin's house, you asked him about what it had been like to camp with his rifle, but you supposed he felt as if he'd already said enough about that for today, because his answers were short and vague. 

Soon you'd settle comfortably into a silence that would endure for the rest of the ride; when you arrived at the house, you'd get Anakin to show you where he kept his tree stand and Christmas decorations. Despite everything, you were looking forward to setting up the tree as much as you'd been looking forward to purchasing it. Between your finances, your relationship with Luke, and your internal conflict with regard to his father, you thought it was about time you got to do something that was just _nice_ — something simple; inconsequential.

If decorating a Christmas tree was anything, it was that... although before you could do it, you'd have to get the sap off of your hands, and now your steering wheel, too.

It had been kind of Anakin, you thought, to share that he happened to know how.

...

The tree stand and ornaments were in the basement. They were piled up beneath a sheet in a damp corner, just a few feet behind the chair in which Anakin had sat and regulated his breathing after your most recent, ill-fated attempt at making one another happy. You couldn't help but think yet again about that day as you retrieved the items you needed, which made you glad of the fact that Anakin had not accompanied you this time around.

You didn't think about his breathlessness, though; didn't think about the look on his face before he'd retreated upstairs out of a completely unnecessary sense of embarrassment. Instead, you thought about what he'd felt like pressed up against you from behind; about how sharply the coolness of the wall had contrasted with the warmth of his body. You thought about the way your earlobe had throbbed once he'd finished biting it, and about his breath on the back of your neck. You even thought about the sound that had escaped his lips when he'd first slipped inside of you. 

The way he'd kissed you before it had all started, too, floated around in your mind; the more often he did that, the better he seemed to get at it. You considered what it might be like to be out of practise when it came to something so many people did so regularly, and then you (juxtapositionally) lamented your continued lack of closeness with Luke. The fact that you'd yelled at him and then run off crying must have hurt his feelings, because if he had begun to warm up to you again after the night he'd come home from work drunk, your recent outburst had certainly put a stop to it.

You knew he felt guilty; knew that guilt was a big part of why he'd opted to withdraw from you once again... but you also couldn't help but notice that he didn't feel quite guilty enough to list his stupid car for sale online or in the local newspaper. You felt guilty too, of course, for what you'd been doing with his father; however, that seemed less like a deliberate transgression than an act of desperation— comfort-seeking during a time when comfort seemed especially difficult to come by.

That was wrong too, of course: Your fucking Anakin on his couch and in his basement (not to mention kissing him at every available opportunity), were more than mere expressions of despair. Rather, they were expressions of attraction; evidence of his having made you want him, no matter how unlikely or how misguided it was.

Still not yet prepared to entirely acknowledge that to yourself, you began to ascend the stairs with the tree stand instead. It was heavy, so you decided to carry it up independently of anything else. It would be easy enough to come back down for the ornaments in a little while. 

You did wonder if Anakin ever got lost in thoughts of you the same way you seemed to have started to get lost in thoughts of him; decided that he most likely didn't. Surely he was too old and too stubborn to let something like that clutter up his mind; anyway, to him, it must still have seemed as if you were merely taking pity on him. You'd told him that wasn't the case, of course, but whether he believed you or not was a different story. 

"What the fuck took you so long?" was the first thing he asked when you appeared at the top of the stairs, although he didn't sound upset.

"It was kind of buried," you said of the stand, although that was only half-true. "How long has it been since you last had a tree, anyway?"

"Not since the last time I bothered with any of this shit," he told you. You guessed that must have been the last Christmas prior to his friend's passing away. 

"It's nice of you to do it for Leia," was all you said.

He laughed, which you hadn't expected. "She's just afraid I'm going to die before she gets another chance at it."

You didn't know how to respond to that. "...I think it's more that she loves you," you tried, not exactly eager to discuss Anakin's mortality, even if he did seem to be fairly flippant about it.

He waved his hook at you dismissively. "Sure, that too."

"Where should I put this?" you asked as you held up the stand, both because you wanted to change the subject and because you wanted to put the tree in water.

"Hm? Oh— next to the TV in the living room, I guess. That's where we always used to put it."

"Okay. Should I grab the rest of the decorations after that, or do you want to wait until tomorrow?"

You'd started for the living room by then. Anakin followed you as he answered, "I want to get it over with, so we might as well do it today." He paused a moment as you set down the stand. "...You know this isn't really in your job description, right?" You could have sworn he sounded contrite. 

"Maybe not," you admitted, "but I didn't figure you'd want to wait for Leia to be able to come and help, and anyway, I think it's kind of nice— I haven't done anything like this in years." Your family lived far enough away that it wasn't always practical to go and visit them over the holidays, and again, all you and Luke ever did was put a little plastic tree on the coffee table. It occurred to you then that Anakin might not even want your assistance. "...If you'd rather I _didn't_ help," you started, "I can just—"

"No," he said. "No— no, it's fine, as long as you actually want to—"

"I do. Like I said, it's nice."

"...Okay."

After that, you did the work of wrenching the sawed-off bottom of the tree into the stand, meddling with it until it looked straight, and giving it some water. Then, you used rubbing alcohol to finally clean your hands of the sap, making sure to thank Anakin for his advice. Once your skin was sap-free, you retrieved the rest of what was piled up in the corner of the basement; set several boxes of ornaments and strings of lights next to where you'd placed the tree itself.

Anakin, for the most part, was quiet while you went about the business of setting it all up. He went through another cigarette while he waited, only putting it out to join you when it was time to open up the boxes, and decide where everything ought to go. There were plenty of ornaments to go through, and by the time the two of you were standing before your finished product, it had grown dark outside. 

"How's that?" you asked, having just applied the finishing touches. As far as you were concerned, the tree looked quite festive: It had lights and baubles, decorative pine cones, little fake icicles, and plastic candy canes. You couldn't help but notice that many of the decorations seemed almost vintage to you, as if Anakin hadn't replaced them since before his children had been born.

"It looks as good as it's going to look," he said. For all his reluctance, he'd been helpful— he'd hung up just as many of the ornaments as you had, if not more. 

"I think it's perfect," you countered, and that was when you glanced out the window; registered just how late it really was. You checked your phone, only to find that you had indeed stayed well past the time you'd normally have left. There were no messages from Luke, not that you expected him to miss you.

"You're late, aren't you?" asked Anakin.

"I am," you confirmed, "but it's okay— I hardly noticed." That was honest: You really hadn't been paying attention to the time.

He rolled his eyes, which you supposed he couldn't help. 

"I'm not in a rush," you went on. "I can stay to heat something up for you to eat, and—"

"No," he insisted, "it's fine."

"You have to eat _something_ , or I haven't really done my job, have I?"

"I'll order in," he said. "I know you probably want to go home, and—"

You cut him off with a sharp, irrepressible laugh; the thought of being eager to go back to your apartment struck you as funny. You must have let your guard down a bit more than you'd intended while you'd been hanging ornaments; normally, you'd have been careful to keep something like that to yourself.

He certainly understood, because he seemed to grow both suddenly and distinctly uncomfortable. 

You stood staring at each other for a little while after that; eventually, to break up the silence, you asked him what he planned on ordering to eat.

He told you that he had no idea... and then asked you if you might be interested in helping him choose something.

After a few moments' hesitation, you answered that you were, and that was how you ended up staying at Anakin's house for dinner.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I really needed a Christmas tree chapter, I'm sorry.


	17. Thank You *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the spam. I fully intended to write something else today, but I have no focus and this is what's ready, so here.

_"I think I should probably get going, now."_

_"...I think you're probably right."_

...

The apartment was mostly dark when you finally arrived at home, but the front door was unlocked. You walked in expecting to find Luke on the couch, either awake watching television or freshly passed out in his work clothes; however, he was nowhere to be seen. At first you were annoyed that he seemed to have gone to bed without so much as texting to ask where you were, but your irritation dissolved fairly quickly when you noticed what he'd done before heading off to sleep.

You couldn't help but say his name under your breath as you set down your things, and approached the centre of the living room. The dirty mugs, dog-eared magazines, and half-eaten plates of underwhelming food which would usually have adorned the surface of the coffee table at this time of night had been graciously cleared away. More than that, they'd been unexpectedly replaced by the little plastic Christmas tree whose presence you had been quite sure you wouldn't be experiencing at all this year. The sight of it was enough to make you smile, and the obviousness of Luke's intent in setting it up made you glad you'd come home. 

You had been disquietingly reluctant to leave Anakin's house that night; all it would have taken to get you to stay would have been for him to ask. He hadn't, of course; in fact, after dinner, he'd seemed to grow nervous. Nervousness didn't suit him, and you supposed he knew it: When Anakin was anxious about something, he would typically work to gradually increase the abrasiveness of his own demeanour. He did this in the hope of driving away whatever threat it was he perceived; if it didn't work by the time he'd rendered himself intolerable, then he would physically retreat. His technique left him very little recourse when it came to you in particular— he couldn't treat you like garbage anymore without it seeming patently disingenuous, and when he retreated, he knew now that you were inclined toward following him.

This meant that when you'd stood up from the table following your shared meal of inauthentic-yet-palatable Chinese food and stared wordlessly at each other once again, he had appeared to freeze in place. You'd shared the same type of glance you always seemed to share prior to one or both of you leaning in to press your lips together, but for whatever reason, you'd made a decision that night. It had been both mutual and unspoken; a choice to resist the urge to be physically intimate with one another, no matter how much you both wanted it. 

A large part of you, now, was grateful you hadn't started to kiss him; happy you hadn't sat him down on his sofa only to climb up atop his lap and rake your nails down his chest. The tiny tree on your coffee table was adorned with decorations to suit its size; diminutive orbs in every imaginable colour whose effervescence was magnified by the equally-minute string of lights Luke had wrapped around the whole thing when he'd first set it up. The gesture was kind, you thought— genuinely meaningful in a way you hoped he understood. Beyond that, it had the distinct effect of softening the edge of your near-constant irritation with him; assuaged the sense of despair that had set in and overtaken the formerly-loving dynamic of your relationship.

There was no reason, after all, for Luke to dig that tree out of the closet and make it look beautiful except to make you happy... and it felt to you as though he hadn't cared much about doing that for quite a while before tonight.

After taking a few moments to admire both the sight of the miniature display at the centre of the room and how it made you feel, you decided to make your way toward the bedroom. You were very quiet, because while it was certainly your intention to join Luke beneath the sheets, you didn't want him to become aware of your presence until you'd slid in beside him: If he was going to put forth the effort required to surprise you with an act of goodwill, then you were determined to do the same for him. 

Anyway, to your own shame, you also still happened to be feeling the effects of the very specific type of tension you had presumed you'd be able to escape by going home after dinner: By separating yourself from Anakin; by leaving his presence. You didn't admit it to yourself directly (not that night, anyway), but Luke's father had more than whetted your appetite.

You found yourself presented, now, with an opportunity to satisfy both your need to thank Luke for his thoughtfulness, and satiate your admittedly much more primal desire to touch and be touched. The duplicity inherent in fulfilling both of these needs at the same time was relegated to the back of your mind, if you acknowledged it at all.

By the time you'd removed your clothes and dumped them unceremoniously on the floor at the foot of the bed, Luke had begun to stir, although only slightly. He was very clearly still asleep when you climbed in beside him; somehow remained unconscious even as you pressed into him from behind. He was warm, and he smelled like soap; his hair was even still damp from the shower you figured he must have taken just prior to laying down. You wondered briefly if he'd expected you to react to his effort precisely like this before deciding that, given the way you were feeling right now, you didn't actually care.

Putting a hand atop the gentle curve denoting his waist, you ran your fingers (hopefully they weren't too cold) over his hip, giving him a squeeze there before continuing on with your journey down his leg. Luke had incredible legs; they were hard and strong from carrying heavy components around the garage at his work all day long, and the way they felt when you had the good fortune of wrapping your own ankles around them was incomparable to almost anything else.

You could only reach to about his knee from the position you were in right now, so once your arm had extended as far as it could down the length of him, you pulled it back upward. This time, you stopped before you reached the concave dip of that perfect little waist of his; slid your hand around to the front of his body instead. He must have been starting to wake up (either that, or your touch had been even more effective than you'd anticipated), because he was most certainly aroused— just as much as you'd been not an hour before, in the midst of trying not to kiss his dad.

Even the most fleeting thought of the tension you'd shared with Anakin following dinner was enough to make you squirm happily. Between that and the warm body yielding presently to your eager touch, you couldn't stop yourself from grabbing insistently onto Luke's unconscious expression of his own enthusiasm. You squeezed his length and palmed his head; by the time he'd started to leak hungrily into your hand, it was clear that he'd woken the rest of the way up for you.

You shifted to give him space to turn over onto his back, although you didn't let go of him. He pulled open his eyes and looked up sleepily at your face; asked quietly, _"What are you doing?"_ It made you smile, although later on you would suppose that it was a very good thing Luke couldn't have begun to guess why.

"Saying hello," you told him. "I'm sorry I missed you."

You tightened your grip on him then, and while he did moan, he also still asked, "Is my dad okay?" He must have been concerned that the reason for you being late was that something had happened to Anakin. 

"He's fine," you said. "He just needed some extra help setting things up for Christmas." You appreciated not having to lie.

"He _hates_ Christmas," Luke pointed out. You began to stroke him; that made him roll his hips into your grasp.

"I know," you answered sedately, admiring the sight of his stomach tensing up as you moved your hand. "It's for your sister, remember?"

 _"Oh._ Y-yeah." 

You moved again; this time, you did let go... but only so you could turn your body around for the purpose of casting off the sheet entirely, and procuring a different type of access to him. You didn't say another word before sealing your lips around the base of his tip, and sucking him the rest of the way into your mouth. He jumped and shouted, and reached down to tangle his hand up in your hair. 

You started to bob your head up and down; you went slowly at first, dragging your bottom teeth along the underside of his shaft. He thrummed and pulsed against your tongue, which made you pick up your pace; when you did, you began to feel his grip on your hair tighten. A sharp sound escaped the back of your own throat as he started to push your head down and tug it back up again at his leisure. You couldn't help but gag a bit, but you didn't mind gagging. He didn't mind it, either.

 _"Get up here,"_ he demanded breathlessly, and you knew just what he needed you to do. He released your hair, but you didn't acquiesce to him— not right away. The first thing you did after taking your mouth from him was let him hang helplessly for a few moments in the cool air of the room, because it was fun to watch him writhe around a bit. It wasn't until he finally started to whine that you clambered up on top of him, and warmed him up the way he really wanted.

"Thank you," you said, pressing down hard as you leaned into his chest. 

_"Ah!_ F-for what?" He'd been in the middle of a sharp upward thrust when you spoke.

"For the tree," you answered, as you began to work your way into a rhythm in tandem with him.

"The—? Oh! I thought you— _mm!—_ would... I mean, I thought you'd like—"

"I do like it— _I like it a lot."_ Just as when you'd had your mouth on him, you started to increase your speed. You took a moment to gaze down at him simply because he was beautiful; after that, your eyes fell shut and your mind took you back in time to the parking lot outside the grocery store. 

_Thank you for letting me pick the tree!_

Those words— your words— echoed in your mind. You'd been happy to get to choose it, and Anakin had been happy to let you, however covert his joy had happened to be. "It's... _perfect,"_ you added aloud with a gasp; if you'd been thinking about it, you would have realized that you could have meant either one of those damn trees. They were both lovely, and ultimately, they were both expressions of love: Effort expended for the sole purpose of making someone else happy.

Luke didn't say anything else; just cried out as you descended forcefully upon him one last time. He seemed to have a lot more to give you that night than a little plastic tree, and so you took it; accepted every last bit of it before squeezing him tightly between your knees, and finally collapsing onto his chest.

You reached up to touch his hair; it was still damp, but you didn't mind. You'd trimmed Anakin's hair that morning following his shower— not a lot, just a little. Just enough to keep it out of his eyes. He didn't like to cut it as short as it needed to be when he'd been in the army; that's what he'd told you, anyway. 

It didn't take Luke a very long time at all to fall back to sleep. Eventually, he would soften up enough to slip out of you; that was when you slid off of him in return. You rested your head on your pillow, and (not wanting to look in the direction of the crack in the plaster beside the closet) watched his chest rise and fall until you slipped away into the depths of your own mind, too.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm so glad this isn't my life; also, why can't this be my life?
> 
> I'm sorry if that was all too disjointed, but Reader's thoughts are disjointed, so I like it.


	18. Bravery

"The combat was supposed to have been over by then— at first we thought it was a joke."

The bathroom was warm and damp. You'd left the door open, but only enough to let out some of the extra steam, because Anakin didn't like to be cold. The mirror was fogged-up anyway, and you'd pushed your sleeves past your elbows in an attempt not to get them wet as you perched on the edge of the bathtub. Anakin himself sat (limbless, which although you knew he hated it, was practical under these circumstances) on a plastic shower chair you hadn't even known he owned until today. It was the first time he'd ever conceded to accepting your help in this precise way, and you knew he wasn't particularly happy about it.

His discomfort with the present was most probably why he had opted to tell you a bit about the past: The day he'd been injured, specifically, along with the bomb that had blown him apart. So far he'd spoken almost apologetically, as though he wanted you to remember that there was a reason for his body being what it was— as though he felt guilty for subjecting you to it. 

"A fake bomb would have been a pretty shitty joke, don't you think?" you asked, spreading a thick handful of body wash over his chest. You'd always liked the smell of Anakin's soap; it was relatively subdued, but with a sharp, distinctly aquatic afternote. 

"Shitty jokes are just part of being a soldier," he informed you. "It wasn't until we got right up next to it that we realized it was dangerous. It was _so fucking close_ to the barracks tent; I don't know how the hell the bastard who put it there managed to do it without anyone noticing." He shook his head at that point, trying to get a few wet tendrils of his own hair away from his face. It didn't work, so you used the less soapy one of your hands to push it out of the way for him. The shower head was attached to a long hose, and although it was turned on, it was currently hanging down near the bathtub drain. The water streaming out from it was almost too hot for you, but Anakin had told you that was how he liked it.

You started to rub the soap onto his skin, watching it foam into a thick lather. He was tense; you wished he'd relax, but he couldn't seem to do that any more than you could keep yourself from appreciating the landscape of his body as you commenced washing it for him. "Did you ever figure out who planted it?" you asked of the bomb, as your palm slid across his breast bone and down his side. You could feel his ribs that way, along with his scars; several large swaths of his skin were unnaturally smooth because of them. Other parts had little divots or pockmarks or discoloured ridges, and he winced when your hand travelled over them, although you knew very well that his wincing wasn't because he was in pain.

"I didn't care who planted it; not after it went off," he said, shifting his shoulders uncomfortably as he stared at the faucet, and at the tiles on the wall. "If they ever figured it out, nobody ever told me." He paused, seeming to consider something. "Anyway," he added, "do you have any idea how much of _their_ shit _I'd_ blown up by then?" He asked rhetorically, as if it should be very clear that the answer to the question was 'a lot'.

You apologized quietly because you felt you should, and went on to soap his stomach. The end of one of your fingernails accidentally caught his navel, which made you think of when you'd raked your hand down his chest on the sofa. Your breath hitched, and you found yourself having to clear your throat. "...What was it like?" you asked, completely without thinking. It wasn't until your words had already left your mouth that you realized how stupid and insensitive they sounded.

He reacted to the sensation of your nail scraping at him with a muted gasp instead of answering you; it was at that moment you made a deliberate decision to avoid snaking your hand between his legs just then, even if you were only supposed to be helping him wash. It could wait a few minutes; you hadn't meant to let your mind pull you back in time, but you had. If someone were to force you to guess, you'd likely have said that you'd dragged Anakin back to the night of the snowstorm right along with you: When you looked at his face, you noticed he'd closed his eyes, and was breathing as deeply and steadily as you knew he could.

Just when you'd begun to think you weren't going to get a response to your query (which would have been fine, since it had been a stupid question), he answered you, "The bomb going off on me was like being shot at and thrown into a bonfire at the same time— the whole thing happened so fast that I didn't even have time to say 'fuck'." His eyes remained closed, although he didn't sound upset. You'd have expected him to sound upset. "And in case that's not what you meant," he amended, "Mowing shit down from the air was like mowing shit down from the air." Soldiers did what they were told to do, he'd said before, and that was that. Anakin had been a soldier for more than a decade by the time he'd been called into the conflict in the Persian Gulf.

You were rubbing soap over his thighs and the ends of his legs by then, which really wasn't any better than what you'd already temporarily put off. With a few deep breaths of your own, you took a moment to steady yourself on the bathtubs's edge. You were very close to him right now; closer than you got merely helping him dress. Closer, even, than when you put lotion on the remnants of his limbs or helped him with his exercises. The only times you'd ever been quite _this_ close to him had been when— 

"You were brave," you interrupted yourself, both because it was true and because you desperately had to break your own train of thought.

"No I wasn't— I panicked and I fucked up." He still sounded astoundingly calm; still didn't open up his eyes. Again, you would have anticipated this being harder for him to talk about than it seemed to be. Maybe it _was_ difficult and he just wasn't making it evident; maybe it was simply less difficult than being in the present moment. Every time you passed your hand over any part of him which bore evidence of his injury, he shifted or tensed or pursed his lips.

"You walked up to it," you said, finally snaking your hand up the inside of one of his thighs, across a part of him you already knew far better than you had any valid cause to, and down the remnant of his opposite leg. You'd helped dozens of other people this way, but none of them (rightfully, of course) had ever made you feel like this. You noticed your hand was quivering, so you put a stop to it, although not without some effort. How were you supposed to help him this way? "And not only did you walk up to it," you went on, "you opened it up knowing it might kill you."

"It didn't kill me, though." You could have sworn he sounded near-regretful.

"No," you agreed, "it didn't."

You'd slipped your hand up his other side by now, and were starting to wash his back. That seemed to bother him a bit less; you knew because he loosened up, if only marginally. Again, the contrast between the skin on his back and the skin on his chest was significant; also again, though, the parts of him bearing scars didn't bother you at all. You almost wished they did just then, because that might make it easier for you to do your job.

Once you were finished with his back, you retrieved the shower head from the bottom of the bath; began to rinse him off. You'd have offered to let him retain an arm with which to do it himself, but you knew that if he'd felt able to manage it, he'd never have requested your assistance to begin with. He'd seemed a bit despondent all morning, really; not just in his speech, but in his movements, too. Everything he'd done today had been slow and deliberate, and even with that, you couldn't help but notice how many times he'd come close to running out of breath. You'd asked him if he felt sick, but he had handily dismissed your concern. _Everyone has shitty days,_ he'd said, which you supposed was true.

You used your hand to help the water in sloughing off that thick, soapy lather whose scent you appreciated more than you should have; enjoyed the way he felt beneath your fingertips as you did so. You'd told him on the night of the snowstorm that he was nice to touch, but you knew he hadn't really believed you'd meant that.

"Hair?" You asked next, straightening yourself out to try to look him in the eye. He pulled his lids open obligingly, glanced in your direction, and nodded. You stood up as he put his head back; shut his eyes once again. 

Getting his hair wet for him only made you think about how very much you liked it. You ran your fingers through it loosely, pushing it all back and away from his face; thought about when he'd told you that he didn't like to have it cut too short. It wasn't _especially_ long, really, but it was long enough that he didn't look as much like a soldier as he might have otherwise. You'd come under the impression that not looking like a soldier was important to Anakin— this was why you never observed anything aloud about his shoulders' being perennially pulled back, or about how his gait (even on a set of false legs) recalled that of someone accustomed to wearing a uniform. 

You'd put shampoo into his hair by then and were starting to rinse it out; after that, you would work a small dollop of conditioner through it. Anakin's hair always felt softer than it looked. The grey and silver and washed-out blonde all darkened and blended together when it was wet; the variance suited him then just as much then as it did when it was dry. You liked running your fingers through his hair even right now; the time you were taking with this particular task must have given you away, because he piped up abruptly to ask, "What's taking so long back there?"

Miraculously, he still didn't sound angry. 

"Nothing," you lied, moving on hastily to rinsing it out instead. Once his hair was rinsed, this would be finished; once this was finished, you thought, you would have an easier time being who you were supposed to be for him.

After turning off the water, you stood; grabbed a towel. You sponged his hair off with it gently before draping it around his shoulders. "Are you going to want to lie down for a bit when you're done in here?" you asked. If he did, then you'd do the job of applying lotion to his legs while he sat on the edge of his bed; if he didn't, you'd do it on the sofa in the living room.

"I think so." You'd predicted that.

"Okay," you said. You'd dry him off in that case, and then reattach his legs so that he could make his way to his bedroom, where you would take them off again so that you could put his antibiotic onto his stumps. After that, if he still wanted to, he could rest for a bit. 

Drying him off was no easier a task for you right now than washing him had been, but you managed it just as well. 

Anakin was silent all the while, looking exactly as inscrutable as he always did. 

...

"Is there anything else you need to buy for Christmas?" you asked, just having finished with the lotion. After wiping your hands off on the end of the towel that had remained around Anakin's waist until you'd helped him with a pair of those nondescript boxers to which he seemed so partial, you moved to sit next to him on the bed in anticipation of his answer. It was early in the day; you had lots of time to go to the store if there was anything he still happened to be missing.

"I don't know," he said. He was smoking a cigarette by now; you'd put his right arm back onto him following his shower for that express purpose.

"Well, do you know what you want to serve for dinner on Christmas Day?"

"Did you like the Chinese food from the other night?" he asked, without even a hint of irony.

"...I _did,_ but—"

"Then that's what we'll have."

He sounded certain enough (and irritated enough, in stark contrast to the way he'd come off to you in the shower) that you didn't opt to contradict him, at least not right now. "If you say so," you conceded. "Do you want me to leave you alone for a bit, then?" You knew he was tired today.

He didn't respond to that for a number of drawn-out moments, then he put out his cigarette. "...No," he finally answered. "I don't."

"Alright," you said. "I'll stay here for a bit." 

He didn't say anything at all, which you guessed meant he must have appreciated it. You stayed while he smoked one more cigarette; stayed when it made him cough. You stayed when he motioned that he wanted you to take his arm off again so that he could lie down without it, and you stayed as he fell onto his side and rendered himself comfortable. 

It was only when you moved to join him in reclining on the bed that he asked you what you were doing, to which your answer was, "Staying."

He was facing away from you, so you did as you'd done when he'd invited you to spend the night with him here— you put your arm around him, and pressed your face into the back of his shoulder. You felt good this way, despite being overdressed, and despite the fact that you really ought to have been doing something besides joining him for a nap. You didn't think about that right now, though, nor did you think about Luke as you pressed your own body up against his dad's, and appreciated the way he felt.

"I still don't understand," he said, when you hadn't been expecting him to say anything.

"Understand what?" you asked into the pristine skin on his back, while you let your fingers trail over the more haphazard configuration of his chest.

"This— any of this. I can't figure it out."

"There's nothing to figure out." There wasn't. Clearly, you and Anakin were each in possession of something the other needed, along with a willingness (however precarious) to share it. Your job had nothing to do with it, and neither did Luke or the manner in which either of you were tied to him.

"This is worse than fucking," he observed next, a bit disjointedly. 

"What?"

 _"This._ You shouldn't have stayed."

"...Do you want me to go...?"

_"No."_

"Alright."

 _"Please_ don't ever tell—"

"I won't," you promised him. Then, you squeezed him tightly and kissed the back of his neck. His hair was still damp, but it didn't bother you any more than when Luke's hair had still been damp the other night. Of course you weren't going to tell— not Luke, not his sister, and not anyone else. There was no need to, because again, this had nothing to do with anyone except for you and Anakin. Besides that, you were quite sure that it— whatever the hell it was— was temporary. You both knew very well that you couldn't continue on this way forever, whether anyone else found out or not. He had essentially just said so himself. 

Having communicated as clearly with one another as you perhaps ever had, you withdrew into mutual silence. You didn't stop holding him, and he didn't ask you to. 

You hadn't thought yourself especially tired, but you fell into a light sleep this way anyhow, face still pressed into his back. You'd wake up relatively soon; slip out from behind him, somehow managing not to disturb him. You would replace your embrace with the sheet on his bed, and go off to check his mail, empty his ashtrays, and vacuum his curtains. 

Maybe, if you happened upon a bit of luck and were _very_ careful with your words, you could manage to convince Anakin that less-than-genuine Chinese take-out was not an ideal candidate for Leia's highly-anticipated Christmas dinner.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I feel like a lot happened there, although you might not. Only another chapter or so to go, I think, until everyone's in the same miserable, awkward room together. 
> 
> I didn't realize how long this thing was already getting until about yesterday, so... sorry. This story is proving to be a very satisfying outlet for my own emotional nonsense.


	19. Root Vegetables

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one picks up right where the last one left off. It's also a bit of a doozy. It's also my favourite chapter so far.

"You're going to throw that out without opening it?" You were in the kitchen, just having made a new pot of coffee. Anakin was sitting at the table, freshly put-together following the rest he'd taken after his shower. He was smoking a cigarette while looking at the mail you'd brought in for him.

"I am," he confirmed, skillfully employing his hook to pick up a large, brown envelope and proceeding to drop it (along with a sheet of coupons and several flyers) into a tiny wastebin positioned near the leg of the kitchen table. He disingenuously turned his attention, at that point, to the first page of a local newspaper you'd never actually seen him read before.

"...You know it's from the lung doctor, don't you?" you asked of whatever was inside the envelope. You sat down next to him at the table, a mug in each one of your hands. 

"I do know," he said sedately, followed by, "Don't look at my fucking mail."

You tilted your head, ignoring his admonition. "You already know what it is, then...?"

 _"Yes,"_ he confirmed, very suddenly sounding exceedingly irritated. "So do _you_ think you could leave it the fuck alone, please?" He only barely looked up from the newspaper. At least he'd said 'please'.

You weren't exactly enthusiastic about the idea of 'leaving it alone'. Anakin's day-to-day health and wellbeing was largely your responsibility; you didn't think you'd be doing your job very well to let him ignore letters from his doctors. "Maybe you could just open it up and take a look at what she's saying," you tried, already knowing that he wasn't going to receive your suggestion well.

This time he did look up; not only that, he also glared at you. "Fuck off," he said. You hadn't heard him speak to you that way for what felt like a very long time; so long, in fact, that you were taken aback almost as if he'd never said it to you before.

"If you know what it is," you started anyway, "then I don't see the harm in—"

"Shit. You know what?" he interrupted. "You were right— take-out is a crappy idea for Christmas. You want to go to the store?"

Anakin had never, ever been the one to suggest a shopping trip, whether he needed to buy anything or not. To hear him do so caught you off-guard even more than his 'fuck off' had. "I— um—"

"Whatever we get, either you or Luke is going to have to cook it," he went on. "I don't fucking cook."

"That's no problem, but what about—"

"Let's get going, then. If we leave early, there won't be a lineup." At that, he put out his smoke and heaved himself to his feet, leaving his coffee behind. He clearly wasn't feeling much better than he had been before he'd taken his rest, but the subject of his unopened mail seemed to perturb him enough to make him spring into action... if Anakin could ever really have been said to 'spring'.

"...Okay," you conceded. "But maybe when we get back you could take a look at—"

 _"Fuck off,"_ he insisted, and he walked out of the room in the direction of where he kept his coat. 

...

Getting away from the house (and by extension his mail, along with your desire to have him read it) seemed to do something for Anakin's mood, even if it wasn't much. He was pleasant enough at the store, even to the people working there. You were the one who selected most of what he ended up buying, but he seemed relieved that you didn't mind doing the job for him. He'd rolled his eyes and compared you to Luke when you'd promised him that there was no need to buy a pie when you were perfectly capable of making one, but he didn't tell you to fuck off again. He _was_ abrupt with the woman at the check-out counter, but not as much as you knew he could have been, had he felt so inclined.

The car ride back to his house was quiet; it matched the one you'd taken to get to the store to begin with. You didn't bring up his mail again and (of course) neither did he; by the time you'd completed the entire trip, you found that his method of distracting you had almost worked: You'd nearly forgotten the envelope entirely, although perhaps not quite as 'entirely' as Anakin might have liked. 

"So you know how to cook all this shit?" was the first thing he asked, once you were standing in his kitchen together again. Spread out on the table was a selection of food slightly more suited to Christmas than hot and sour soup or fake chow-mein noodles: There was a big, raw, frozen turkey, along with the ingredients for stuffing and a selection of root vegetables. You had everything you needed for a pie, along with a carton of egg nog and a jug of apple cider. The egg nog, Anakin had told you, would only be any good if he spiked it with bourbon; that was why there was a bottle of it, too, set amongst the other purchases. 

"Sure," you said. "I haven't made anything I actually wanted to eat for a while now— it'll be fun." You thought about cooking with Luke; you hadn't done that in forever. Maybe he'd want to help you with this, you mused hopefully— show up early on Christmas Eve to start getting it ready; put it all in the oven alongside you the next day. The mere idea of it made you smile.

"If you say so. Like I told Leia before— the whole thing seems like a hassle to me." He didn't smile; he just shook his head. 

"I'm starting to think she might be right," you ventured. It was true; you hadn't looked forward to spending time with Luke at all for a long while before today, and you still thought it was a good idea for Anakin to get to be with both of his kids at once for the holiday. It wasn't all that often, really, that they all got together at the same time. 

"Fuck— not you too," he said.

"I just think it'll be nice to—"

"I get it," he stopped you, before you could even get started. "You're right; it will be 'nice'— but it'll also be a fucking hassle. You know you're going to be the one dragging that tree out to the curb when I'm finally done with it, don't you? And boxing up the decorations, and cleaning up after the whole thing, and putting away the—"

"I don't mind that any more than I mind making the dinner," you said, looking up from the crowded surface of the table to offer him a smile. He didn't return it; just shook his head again, and moved to walk out of the room. Since he seemed to be finished with the subject of Christmas for the time being, you called out after him, "Are you going to want to do your exercises after I finish putting this stuff in the fridge?"

"Maybe," he answered, before stopping in his tracks to instruct you to leave the bourbon on the counter. Only when you confirmed that you wouldn't refrigerate his liquor did he continue on into the living room. You supposed he was off to watch the news; wait for you to arrive with his resistance bands.

Once he was gone from the kitchen, you retrieved a baking pan from the oven and placed the frozen turkey onto it; after that, you set the whole thing in the fridge to thaw. It would take a few days, and a few days was all that was left until you had to start cooking it. Again, the notion of maybe having Luke's help in preparing dinner made you happy. Something inside of you tried, briefly, to stoke a sense of nervousness about interacting with both him and his dad at the same time over the holiday, but you swiftly dismissed it.

What you sometimes did with Anakin when you were alone with him, you considered as you placed the root vegetables into a box at the bottom of one of the cupboards, was insular: Self-contained and utterly private to the point that you were quite sure you wouldn't have a problem concealing it from Luke, even if you did have to spend time with both of them simultaneously. 

You still felt guilty about it; still knew that to kiss and fuck and even go so far as to cuddle up to your boyfriend's father behind his back was inadvisable at best, and a grievous betrayal at worst. Your guilt, though, was frequently tempered by a sense of ambivalence, if not outright acceptance. It came and went, of course, but it was certainly present— why else would you have curled into him atop his bed in the middle of the day; why else would you ever take longer than you needed to wash his hair, or rub lotion onto his skin?

As you had reflected earlier, it was clear to you that Anakin and yourself each had something to offer one another. You both knew it wasn't quite right (blatantly wrong, even), and for various reasons your respective willingness to give it to each other ebbed and flowed. Still, though, it was what it was. You hadn't stopped wanting to be with Luke; you wanted, in fact, to be with him for a very long time... but the circumstances into which he'd thrust you by purchasing that car of his had driven you far apart. Almost _too_ far apart. Even if the resulting struggle was only temporary, wasn't it okay for you to grant yourself a reprieve in the meantime? All you were doing with Anakin, really, was being close to someone who seemed to want to be close to you.

Experiencing him this way had the effect of making your present life with Luke feel tolerable— and if you wanted to stay with Luke going forward, then the present _needed_ to be tolerable.

Anakin's own reasons for letting himself become physically entangled with his son's partner were somewhat of a mystery to you, but you imagined he must have grown both lonesome and hungry for someone else's touch in the decades following the loss of his wife. You still didn't understand why he'd found himself drawn to you in particular, or how finally giving in to that attraction made him feel about himself... but you guessed that those were things he would reveal to you when he felt the time was right. If that time never came, of course, then that would be fine too; for now, you were just happy to have him. You hoped he was equally happy to have you.

During the time you'd just spent getting lost in your own thoughts, you'd also managed to put away nearly everything you'd brought back from the store with you. The last thing on the kitchen table was that bottle of bourbon, so you picked it up and set it down on the counter, not far from the coffee maker. You'd ask Anakin later why he didn't want it in the fridge; you didn't know the first thing about bourbon, really.

He hadn't made a sound since sauntering off to the living room. As you stood in place and looked around the kitchen, your eye couldn't help but be drawn to that wastebin by the leg of the table— the one into which Anakin had tossed his big, brown, unwanted envelope. It still looked to you as though it were something important; on top of that, you knew that Anakin was relatively flippant about his own health at the best of times. That might have been why— against common sense, ethics, and the law— you bent down to retrieve his discarded mail.

You didn't think about the fact that you'd already become more enmeshed with him than a support worker should ever be with their client, and you hadn't yet acknowledged (or maybe even realized) the steady, recent growth of your attachment to him. The way you felt was undoubtedly clouding your judgement, but because your judgement was clouded, it didn't seem that way to you.

The right thing to do would have been to put the envelope back in the spot to which Anakin had banished it. At most, you should have brought it up with him again; tried to get him to open it for himself, and accept his unwillingness to do so if it persisted. 

You didn't do the right thing, though— you did the thing you wanted to do; the thing that seemed like it might be forgivable if it wound up helping him in the long run. The presumptuous thing; the _patronizing_ thing. 

You'd barely finished skimming the first page of what the doctor had sent when Anakin came back into the kitchen, and promptly lost it on you.

"What the _fuck_ do you think you're doing?" he demanded, marching angrily over to where you were standing.

"I'm sorry! I just thought that—"

"Shut the fuck up! Put that shit down _right fucking now_ unless you want my goddamned hook up your fucking ass!" His breathing told you he was in no position to be shouting (or trying to shove his hook up anyone's ass), but he didn't seem to care what his lungs thought of the way he felt he needed to express himself right now. 

You set his mail down on the table with a freshly-trembling hand. You were no stranger to Anakin making you tremble, but this was different. Knowing you'd made a mistake, you didn't have much of anything to say as far as justifying your actions was concerned. All you could really do now was apologize, and so— once more— that was what you did.

Saying you were sorry, though, didn't seem to make much of an impact. 

He looked at you with desperation (or was it disappointment?) in his eyes. He had only just seemed to realize that he ought not to have yelled, but it was too late for that. His inhaler was sitting on the table not far from the envelope; you wondered if you shouldn't pick it up for him. Something told you, though, that you'd done enough for now— if he needed it, you knew that so long as it was near enough to him, he was perfectly capable of picking it up and administering it to himself. 

He must not have needed it quite yet, because he didn't reach for it. He didn't even move to sit down. All he did was continue to stare at you as he caught his breath. 

You were quiet, because you didn't know what else to say.

 _"Why?"_ he asked, after a number of long, awkward moments had passed.

"Because I was worried," you said. "Because I know how you are, and I didn't want you to—"

"You 'know how I am'? What the fuck is that supposed to mean? And why the hell do you think it gives you the right to open something I already told you to leave the fuck alone?"

It was difficult to argue with him, given that he was correct. "I'm sorry," you tried for a third time. "It was a stupid mistake. I only wanted to—"

"How much of it did you see?" he asked, eyeing the torn envelope. He seemed to have switched from frustration to exasperation by then, which only made you feel worse about what you'd done.

"...Enough that I don't understand why you'd throw it out," you answered tentatively. "It seems to me like you have an opportunity to—"

 _"It's an opportunity I don't want._ Do you understand?"

"No," you said. "Not at all."

He seemed both at a loss for words, and as if he wished more than ever that he could pick up his mail and tear it to shreds. Briefly, you considered how frustrating it must be for him when he was angry— it was no wonder he was so prone to yelling and cursing when his own limitations precluded him from using his body to express himself. That was part of the reason you couldn't understand why he didn't want—

"What time is it?" he asked, interrupting your musing.

"Close to three," you answered hastily, because the clock on the wall was behind him; it was already in your field of vision.

"You can go home early today if you want," he said, in a way which made it very clear to you that he would prefer you leave.

"But what about—"

"It can wait. Whatever the fuck it is you're worried about getting done, it can wait."

"Okay... so I should come back in the—"

"Yes— yes, come back in the goddamn morning. For now, though, I need you to—"

"Alright," you nodded, and with one more glance between Anakin and his envelope, you started to move to get yourself ready to go. It would have been a bit like the time you'd left early because he'd decided to kiss you, except for the fact that it wasn't like that at all. This was considerably worse, not least of all because this time it was your fault. 

He'd retreated back to his spot on the couch by the time you'd gathered your things and put yourself together; you had to pass him on your way to the front door. As you did, you started to ask, "Are you sure you'll be—"

"I'll be fine," he told you, without actually looking in your direction.

Satisfied enough with that answer to follow his instruction and go home, you began to open the door. The cold air was almost enough to bring tears to your eyes. Before you'd stepped all the way outside, though, you heard Anakin call out to you:

"Don't fucking tell my kids!"

"I won't," you promised, and you meant it. You weren't exactly unfamiliar with the necessity of keeping Anakin's secrets for him, whether they had to do with you or his late-night drinking habits... or his opinions about birthdays, or his dislike of onions baked into meatloaf. You'd never told Luke or Leia anything their dad didn't want them to know, and (particularly after the mistake you'd already made), you weren't about to start now.

If Anakin didn't want his children to know that he was apparently sick enough to be a candidate for lung transplantation, then it was his business. If he also didn't want them to know that he was outright rejecting the idea of receiving a new organ even if one became available to him, then that was his business too. 

You wished, now, that you hadn't so flagrantly violated Anakin's privacy. Not only because it had been the wrong thing to do, but because you now found yourself in possession of yet another one of his secrets. You'd never have expected to have to keep quite so many.

This, though— as when you'd decided to climb up onto his lap during the snowstorm— was entirely your doing. That made it your burden to carry, whether you wanted to tote it around or not.

You supposed it was a good thing (for today at least) that you and Luke still weren't making a habit of speaking with one another at any significant length.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fun fact: My highly avoidant personality made the snooping/confrontation part of that chapter incredibly difficult to write. Probably why it's my favourite so far.
> 
> Anyway, don't worry too much about Ani yet; he's certainly not about to fall down dead over Christmas or anything like that. He's also not well, though, and I knew I wanted his shitty health and apparent lack of self-regard to be a big part of this story when I started writing it. 
> 
> Another thing I wanted to do was load poor Reader up with as many of Anakin's secrets and issues and habits and stupid quirks as I possibly could, if only to see how much of it all she can take until something breaks her.
> 
> I'm very curious to see if this might be it, and I'd be lying if I said I didn't hope you are too. :) Thank you for still being here, if indeed you are still here.


	20. Cheer Up

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I loved writing this. For reference, VA = Verteran's Affairs

Pastry dough wasn't meant to be handled— not excessively, anyway. Over-working it tended to make it tough; although a tough pie crust was the last thing you wanted, you were finding it difficult not to treat your ingredients too harshly right now. You wished you were making something like bread; something you needed to knead or punch, or otherwise handle a bit more roughly.

"Damnit!" you shouted, when your hand slipped on a pat of butter and knocked the ball of dough you'd just rolled right onto the floor of Anakin's kitchen. It was early in the afternoon on Christmas Eve, you were trying to prepare for the following day, and you had already been irritated when you'd started.

Luke was not by your side as you'd hoped (he was ostensibly at work, although part of you cynically suspected that he was just getting drunk with his friends in the garage), Leia hadn't yet arrived, and on top of that Anakin had been palpably annoyed with you for days. He'd barely spoken to you, in fact, since you'd opened his mail— he said (brusquely) what needed to be said for you to do your job, and absolutely nothing more. It was almost like when you'd first started working with him, except with a whole new layer of added discomfort. 

You wished more than anything, now, that you hadn't invaded his privacy: Not only was he upset with you; you also had to carry, alone, the burden of the knowledge that he was apparently happy to let himself deteriorate until he died. This was in spite of the existence (the _offer,_ even) of a viable solution to the most pressing threat to his health. You couldn't wrap your mind around that; barely even wanted to try. What business did he have dying prematurely? His children loved him, and even you had begun to come to appreciate him for who he was underneath his irascible exterior. The way you saw it, he was being both selfish and morose, and it bothered you.

You bent down to pick up the sullied ball of dough from the floor; turned it over in your hand to inspect it before deciding to toss it in the trash. You'd over-worked it anyway, so you supposed it was no great loss, but you certainly didn't appreciate having to start all over again.

As soon as the thick, white lump hit the bottom of the garbage can near your feet with a dull _thud,_ you were made aware of the fact that you had, perhaps, been a bit too loud about your frustration. 

"What the fuck is the problem?" asked Anakin, who'd apparently been roused enough by your noise to interrupt his own chain-smoking and news-watching in favour of entering the kitchen.

"Nothing," you said, followed obstinately by, "Go back to the living room and wait for Leia. Everything in here is fine."

"Fuck off," he said. "It's _my_ goddamn kitchen." He stepped up to the counter then, close to where you were already standing. After making a face in response to mess of flour and butter on the laminate surface, he glanced between you and his percolator and asked, "How long has that coffee been sitting there?" 

"A while," you told him. "I haven't had a chance to—"

 _"Fuck,"_ he sighed, and reached over your workspace with his right hand to carefully grip the rubber-encased handle of the pot, only to dump what was left inside of it down the drain.

You sighed too, and backed up to give him both some extra space, and access to the sink. As you wiped your hands off on your pants, you said to him, "Your kids are going to be here soon— do you think you could try to cheer up a little bit?"

He set the pot back down onto the base of the percolator without retrieving even a drop of water, and gave you a hard stare. "'Cheer up'?" 

You knew you weren't supposed to respond to that, but you did anyway. "Yes— _cheer up._ I know you know how much this means to Leia." You didn't yet mention that if Anakin was more of an ass than usual over Christmas, you'd have to listen to Luke worry about just what was wrong with him for days, causing you to have to lie repeatedly about not knowing what the problem could possibly be.

"Fuck off," he repeated. "Who the hell are you to tell me to 'cheer up'?"

Knowing you ought not to answer that either, you did anyway— again, you'd already been annoyed, and Anakin's attitude wasn't helping. "I'm someone who spends more time with you than anyone else," you said, "and that means I'm the person who has to keep all of your goddamn secrets from your kids. You _know_ that if you're even more of a dick than you usually are, they're going to worry about you— and guess who they're going to ask what the hell is wrong with you? Not you, because they already know talking to you is useless. They're going to ask _me,_ and then I'll have to fucking lie for you. Do you know how tired I am of lying for you?"

 _"Shut the fuck up,"_ he demanded, moving in more closely than you appreciated right now. "If you didn't want to fucking lie for me, you should have kept your goddamn hands off my mail— and off my dick, too. What business do _you_ have bitching and complaining about keeping secrets? If I wanted to, I could go to the VA, and—"

"Get me fired? _Go ahead!"_ You realized that you were far beyond irritated: You'd never snapped on Anakin before (which was a miracle in and of itself, really), but you were awfully close right now. "You think anyone else is going to put up with the way you treat people? Unless you plan on whipping out your cock for them too, but I don't fucking think—"

 _"Stop it!_ I already told you to shut the fuck up! I can't even pretend to understand what kind of dumb little whore would want to fuck a busted-up old piece of shit like me— what the hell is wrong with you that made you jump into my lap in the first place? You're as fucked in the head as I am if you—"

You interrupted him by slamming your fist down hard onto the countertop; the flour dusting the surface seemed to jump, and a fork fell to the floor. You looked down at it, and then at your hand; after that— against both your dignity and your own will— you started to cry. You couldn't have stopped yourself if you'd tried; your tears were hot and angry, and they emerged against your best effort. 

Anakin, for his part, seemed to freeze. When you peered back up at him through the salty blur of your own frustration, he looked as if he'd been stunned. Was it his own behaviour making him gape, or yours? 

He was close enough to you by now to reach out to touch you, and so he started to do just that, but he stopped himself. His prosthetic hand paused in the air as he seemed to grow unsure of whether or not he should try whatever it was he'd decided to try.

"What are you doing?" you asked, well aware of the fact that you still sounded distinctly confrontational.

"...I don't know," he admitted, more quietly than he'd said anything else to you thus far. "I shouldn't have— I mean, I didn't—"

"You didn't _what?"_

He pursed his lips and stared at you; you couldn't even begin to guess what he might have been thinking. You thought about what he'd said, and how he was probably right— not because he was a 'broken old piece of shit', but because you'd have had no business riding his dick no matter what his physical condition happened to have been. That only made you feel worse; feeling worse only made it more difficult not to acquiesce to your own emotions. You were glad you'd already wiped your hands off on your pants, because instinct dictated that you hide your face in them as your crying turned to outright sobbing. 

He still hadn't answered you, which was just fine, because you strongly suspected that he didn't know what to say to you anyhow. You couldn't see him through either your tears or your hands, so it took you somewhat by surprise when you felt the distinct sensation of his mechanical fingers pressing gently into your shoulder. Biting down on your own lip, you pulled your hands away from your face (which you were sure looked red and wet and as pathetic as ever to somebody like Anakin) and asked him once more, _"What are you doing?"_

Briefly, it looked as though you'd offended him yet again; soon, though, he seemed to make a deliberate effort to soften his expression. "You don't remember what I said to you before, do you?" he asked, having just closed off even more of the space between the two of you. 

"I don't know what you're talking about," you said, starting to feel a bit deflated by then.

"I don't like seeing you cry," he reminded you. The way he said it, it could have been an admonition as much as it could have been an expression of concern.

"Then maybe you shouldn't call me things like—"

 _"I'm sorry,"_ he said, which took you off-guard as much as any epithet he'd ever spat at you. Still speaking more gently than he had since walking into the kitchen in the first place, "Do you understand just how much you scare me— how much you fuck me up?"

"What?" 

"Do I seem like someone who makes a habit of pulling out his dick for just anybody the way I've pulled it out for you?"

You thought about that. "...No," you answered honestly. "No, you don't. I just—"

He cut you off by squeezing your shoulder as tightly as you knew he could. "That's why you scare the shit out of me," he confessed. "My wife has been dead for as long as you've been alive, and in that whole time, I haven't even come close to doing what I've done with you with _anybody_ else." He didn't need to add that you were the worst possible person he could have opted to do it with. "The only explanation I can think of for the shit we've done is that there's something fucking wrong with you— because other than that, I don't understand why you would—"

 _"I needed you!"_ You didn't mean to shout it; didn't mean to sound as fervent as you were sure you did. It was very likely that you hadn't even meant to word it so glibly, but you had. If nothing else, it was at least honest.

This time it was his turn to ask, "What?"

"I needed you," you reiterated, supposing you must have settled on that particular phrasing. "Do you know how long it had been since I—"

"So you were horny?"

"No!" you protested, after which you paused. "...Well, yes— but it wasn't only that. You were kind when I needed someone to be kind to me; there when I needed somebody to be there. I couldn't stop thinking about that kiss you gave me when I was crying into your sink, and when we ended up stuck in the house together alone and drunk, I just..." you trailed off then, not unlike he might have. You shrugged helplessly, and looked up at him, hoping he understood. You didn't know what else to say; hardly even knew how to finish what you'd already started saying.

"...You couldn't stop thinking about it?" he asked of that kiss.

"Of course not. How could I?"

"It was a mistake— I fucked up trying to make you feel better, and I didn't—"

"It _did_ make me feel better— that's the problem, isn't it?"

He looked at you doubtfully. "You said it 'distracted' you."

"'Distracted' might have been a bit of an understatement," you admitted, marvelling at the specificity of his memory, given that he'd been drunk that night. "Why else would I keep on—"

"I told you— _I thought you felt sorry for me."_

He still hadn't taken his hand away from your shoulder. You glanced between it and his face while you said to him as earnestly as you could, "I've never felt sorry for you, Anakin. Never— not even once." You were impressed enough with his honesty that you thought he deserved yours.

He maintained his skeptical expression for a few more moments; finally, his hand fell from your shoulder and he sighed. You were both quiet, until you slowly and carefully raised your own hand to reach up and touch his face. It was a stupid, unnecessary thing to do and you knew it, but you couldn't seem to stop yourself from doing it any more than you'd been able to stop yourself from thinking about that damn kiss in the first place.

You considered, then, the way your palm had felt on the cool, hard cinder block wall in his basement; how difficult it was for you to maintain your professionalism while you ran your soapy hands over his body, and your fingers through his wet hair. You remembered (for what felt like the millionth time) the act of dragging your nails down his chest.

It was bad enough that you wanted to kiss him or fuck him or otherwise be close to him in the first place; it was even worse that you had come to suspect that you might have wanted those things independently of anything else that may have been going on in your life— or, more importantly, with Luke. You hadn't taken your hand from his face yet, and you still didn't want to. You didn't feel as if you'd decided to crane upward, but you must have, because you did.

He leaned down to meet you, and all of a sudden you were kissing him as if you'd never opened his mail at all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ahhaha yeah, that was fun. Hope everyone's having/about to have a nice holiday (lol).


	21. Cigarette Smoke *

He started to nudge you backwards not long after your lips met; you slid your hands down his neck and over his shoulders, and clung to his shirt as you let him walk you across the kitchen. It felt like no time at all before your back ended up pressed against the fridge, and he slid his own hand beneath the hem of your shirt to grasp you by the waist. Just like the first time, his fingers were hard and cool; again, they felt like nothing you'd ever experienced prior to him.

"I— I thought you were still angry about what I did with your mail," you gasped haltingly, when your mouths finally parted. Despite both his honesty and his having dramatically softened his own demeanour since making you cry, you really had believed him too unhappy with you to want to do anything even remotely like this. You'd barely even meant to kiss him; it had just seemed to _happen—_ but then, that was how it often was when the two of you came too close together.

"I _am_ still angry," he said, and he thrust his hips into you sharply before leaning in to bite your neck. He had those shorts on again; the old, olive-coloured ones he used to wear to run. They couldn't mask his arousal now any better than they could when you'd been sitting next to him on his couch during the storm, but this time he didn't seem at all embarrassed by the fact that he was rock-hard inside of them. Conversely, it appeared to you as though he was quite content for you to know exactly what it was he wanted.

After inhaling sharply and letting out an involuntary squeal at the sensation of his teeth sinking into your neck, you curled your fingers into his biceps and started to ask, "If you're still mad, then why—"

 _"I don't know,"_ he interrupted into your skin, before returning enthusiastically to what he'd already been doing. 

Anakin, you had gathered so far, very much liked to bite— you certainly didn't mind, because you yourself were partial to being bitten. His teeth felt magnificent when he'd press them into your skin, and although right now you wanted to tell him to bite you harder, you knew better than to goad him into putting fresh marks on you today: His children, after all, were due to arrive in short time. You thought briefly about the bag you'd brought with you for the purpose of spending the night— was there foundation in there; something you could use to cover up anything Anakin might leave you with? You couldn't remember right now.

You squirmed against him nonetheless, and he made a noise. It was an insistent sound— a hungry sound. You said his name, and slid your hands beneath his arms and around to his back. His shoulders were broad and imposing; you'd always believed they suited him. You thought about the way he'd edged them in between you and the man who'd yelled at you in the grocery store parking lot on Luke's birthday, and then about how he'd been holding them only minutes ago when he'd approached you at the counter. They betrayed him; they were emblematic of the person he thought he only _used_ to be— a person he didn't seem to realize he still was.

Just as before, his biting you made you want to dig your own nails into him, so you felt your way down his back to the hem of his shirt and snuck your hands up beneath it to do just that. He must not have expected it, because your clawing at him seemed to give him a start; however, his jumping had the effect of making him grind into you that much more assertively. He took his mouth from your neck and pulled his head back to stare at you. You might have expected him to look angry or bewildered, but he didn't; instead he exuded a plaintiveness that somehow suited him as much as his broad shoulders or the silver streaks in his hair.

"Tell me what you want," you said, even though you already knew.

 _"I want to fuck you,"_ he answered, and for a split second he seemed irritated with you for making him say it. That didn't last, though; soon you'd retrieved your arms from around him in favour of unfastening your pants and sliding them off over your hips. You couldn't help but look down as he took his own hand out from beneath your shirt, and shoved the waistband of his shorts out of the way to reveal himself to you. You reached in to feel his tip, which— not unlike you yourself— was wet with anticipation.

You wrapped your fingers around him and pumped him a few times before squeezing his base, which actually seemed to make him whimper. Anakin's 'whimpering' was more akin to a low growl, really, but that only made him that much more enticing to you. He was tall, but not so much that you couldn't stand on your toes, tilt your hips forward, and steer him inside of you. You groaned heavily as he slipped in; it was virtually effortless, given how much he'd already made you want him. 

Next you said his name, which he seemed to like because upon hearing it, he started immediately to thrust. Your own legs quivered, and you buried your face in the crook of his neck. For a moment you found yourself feeling nervous, because you didn't want him to overexert himself as he'd done that day in the basement, but he must have remembered, too: He was careful, this time, to restrain himself; try not to move too quickly. 

You certainly didn't mind— those scars of his you'd grown to appreciate so much felt all the more sublime when he fucked you hard and slow. On top of that, the fine, amber-coloured little hairs at the base of his cock were rubbing at you in _just_ the right way every single time he impacted you; very soon, you were crying out into his neck with each sharp, deliberate little move he made.

"I've hated myself for years for wanting this," he confessed breathlessly into your ear as you continued to whine against his skin. 

"I'm sorry, Anakin," you said, having slid your hands up the back of his shirt once again to claw at him some more. All the while, he kept on plunging languidly into you, both ceaselessly and deeply. He placed his hand on the back of your head too, which was still buried in his neck. It was such a waste, you thought, that he hadn't even tried to do this for so many years before doing it with you: His touch was generous; divinely unique. How could you ever have been expected to resist it, after experiencing it that first time?

"It's too late for 'sorry'," he breathed, having by then picked up his speed enough that you'd have started to worry about him, if you hadn't been so lost in the way he was making you feel.

"I know— I know it is. I just— I— _ah!"_ Your legs trembled and you wrenched his body as closely to yours as you possibly could. You both almost faltered, but by some miracle, he didn't fall and neither did you. Instead, you clashed and you clashed _hard_ ; your walls closed around him tightly, and he released with exactly as much force as you'd come to expect from him. The way he came was in such stark contrast with the way he did nearly everything else that it always took you off-guard; always impressed you— always thrilled you, even if nothing about your boyfriend's dad ought to have exhilarated you the way Anakin did.

He groaned into your ear as he finished; soon you realized that you couldn't maintain your position any longer, and dropped back to your heels, causing him to slip out of you. Sticky tendrils denoting the way you felt about each other connected you, and you noticed his thighs quivering the same way yours had been not long ago. You listened to his breathing; it obviously wasn't ideal, but it also didn't sound altogether too laborious. He didn't need your help right now; you didn't need to carry him to a chair, or jump away to retrieve his inhaler. 

All you needed to do was hold him, which graciously, was all you really wanted right at that moment.

"Was it better this time?" he asked, entirely unexpectedly. It always took you aback when he displayed any form of insecurity; he seemed to have no idea how very adept he was at pleasing you. If he really was still angry about his mail, he certainly didn't seem it right now.

"Perfect," you said simply, still trembling as you traced with your fingertips the marks you'd only just realized you had left on his back.

"I never thought I'd—"

_"Shit!"_

You hadn't wanted to interrupt his thought; in fact, you were quite eager to hear what he had to say, but it was at that very moment that you registered the distinct and altogether-too-close sound of the ice on the driveway outside being crunched beneath a set of tires— Luke or Leia's tires. 

"What?" he asked, because he must not have heard.

"Someone's here," you said. "We need to—"

"Goddamn it." He backed up at that, snapping those sticky little strings of mutual desire as you separated. You pulled your own pants back up first and hastily refastened them; after that, you bent down to retrieve Anakin's shorts and pull him back together, too. You noticed a wet spot on the very front of them as you did; since he didn't have time to change (and since you were, quite shamefully, concerned about the way your impromptu fuck might have affected the air in the kitchen), you instructed him to sit down at the table and light a cigarette. He seemed to understand, because he nodded and then immediately obliged, without saying another word.

You took a deep breath followed by a peek out the window; it turned out you'd been right— Leia's car was, indeed, sitting in the driveway. Not only that, but she appeared to have been the one to pick up Luke from work, because he was with her too. They met on the driver's side of the car, spoke with one another briefly, and began to make their way up to the front door. 

You were glad you'd noticed the sound of the ice; if you hadn't, your cover most certainly would have been blown: Leia almost never knocked on her way into her dad's house, because she didn't like to force him to get up to let her in. It was a kind gesture, but it also could have spelled disaster— not only for your relationship with Luke, but for your job and whatever the hell it was you had with Anakin, too... which, although it was still as unabashedly wrong as it had ever been, somehow meant enough to you that you wanted to maintain it, however unwisely.

As the scent of Anakin's cigarette smoke graciously filled the room, you went back to the counter, where all of your baking implements were still exactly as you'd left them. Your butter was softer than it ought to have been by now, but that was fine; it hadn't started to melt. You took a deep breath, retrieved the large mixing bowl in which you'd conjured up your initial, trash-destined attempt at a pie crust, and prepared to commence starting over again. Hopefully, you didn't look like someone who'd just been pushed up against a fridge and fucked enthusiastically by the very last person you ever should have been digging your nails into.

The sensation of Anakin soaking through your panties and dripping down the inside of your thigh certainly didn't help, but you ignored it because you had to. Soon, you thought, you could excuse yourself to go and clean up... but first, you had to greet Luke and his sister.

Part of you now hoped that Luke _had_ been drinking at work, if only because it meant he would be less likely to notice anything about either your appearance or demeanour that might have betrayed what you'd been up to in the kitchen with his dad. Leia was another matter, of course, but with any luck she would be so focused on Anakin that she wouldn't notice anything amiss with you. The stony expression on his face didn't give away a thing; at worst, he might have appeared a bit distracted... but it seemed to you his kids were already used to that. 

Still breathing deeply, you stared down into the sink as you washed the butter and sex off of your own trembling hands, and tried your best not to speculate anxiously about the nature of the evening ahead of you.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I didn't actually intend for this chapter to be 2k words of kitchen porn, but trust me when I say that ending it there worked better than just jumping straight into the next scene. 
> 
> Now, if any of you were hoping for them to actually get busted over Christmas, you may very well be let down. I've got a very awkward and potentially painful plan for this narrative which I personally am going to _love_ executing, but it necessitates that nobody outright catches Anakin and Reader fucking under the tree or what-have-you. 
> 
> Thank you so much if you're still here, and again, I hope you're having a decent holiday in spite of everything going on in the world. See you very soon.


	22. Refill

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is a bit long, even after slicing it to bits. Sorry.

"I've always loved the way you do that," said Luke, with a smile on his face that you'd almost have described as shy.

"Weren't you the one who showed me this in the first place?" you asked, shoving another handful of seasoned butter beneath the turkey's skin, and rubbing it onto the meat. It was how you prepared chicken at home, too— you hated dried-out poultry, and this particular technique tended to reliably remedy that problem. 

"No— no, I don't think so. I only started doing it that way after watching you." 

"Oh. I must have read it somewhere, then... or seen it on TV." You returned his smile, which should have been easier than it was, but frankly, you were still a bit distracted. 

"Wherever you learned it, it works," he said approvingly, and at that he moved a bit more closely to you. 

You were both standing at Anakin's counter. It was still Christmas Eve; however, it was now later in the afternoon— almost evening. Luke and Leia had been here a few hours, and while greeting them had been about as awkward as you'd anticipated it would be (at least for you), things had, thankfully, gone relatively smoothly following their arrival anyway. 

You'd been afforded a chance to excuse yourself and wipe their dad off of your legs soon after they'd shown up, and Anakin had steadfastly remained at the kitchen table long enough for the spot on the front of his shorts to dry. His lack of willingness to rise to his feet for the first hour or so of the visit was easy enough for him to explain away, and by the time he left his seat to go off to the living room with Leia, the evidence of what he'd done with you against the fridge had rendered itself invisible. You knew because you'd stolen a glance for yourself, such was the strength of your determination to keep your shared secret.

Leia had met Anakin as affectionately as she always did, walking over to where he'd been seated at the table to wrap her arms around him and wish him a Merry Christmas. He'd received her well in spite of himself; as you'd noticed before, if there was anything that could be said to reliably soften Anakin's demeanour, it was his daughter. She always seemed to be able to coax him into at least a slightly better mood, and it was a relief to see her do just that as she'd sat down next to him, and started to tell him about her week. 

Her focus on her dad, as you'd hoped, had stolen her attention away from you; that, too, was a relief. Luke had been a bit of another matter: He had, in fact, been drinking with his friends following whatever it was he'd had to accomplish at work that day, although he hadn't been quite as tipsy as you might have expected. He wasn't flippant or contrary; if anything, he was being very sweet. Any initial discomfort you might have felt as he had pulled you in closely upon greeting you had dissolved by now, and presently it felt _almost_ as if things between the two of you were normal. Being alone together in the kitchen (any kitchen) for the first time in a while certainly helped.

You didn't even stiffen up when he moved to stand behind you, put his arms around your waist, and rest his head on your shoulder as you went on preparing the thawed turkey to go into the oven the following day. The gesture of affection surprised you a bit given the way things had been between you at home recently, but you supposed that if there was a time to forget about being generally annoyed with one another, Christmas was it.

You even found it impossible not to laugh when you finished with the herb-infused butter and moved to wash your hands off in the sink, only to have him continue to stick to your back. 

"What are you doing?" you asked, unable to stop yourself from grinning as you turned on the water.

"I missed you," he said, and it struck you that he could have meant he missed you today, or that he'd been missing you for months. "Anyway, it's easy for me to forget just how much you do for my dad since I'm not here every day. It's nice to see him happy— or at least not miserable."

Tempering with a deep breath the fresh pang of guilt you experienced at his having said that, you answered, "I think he's mostly just happy to see you and Leia."

Luke kissed your shoulder then, and you could feel him shake his head. "No, it's more than that. Trust me, I can tell— he's usually a lot more wound-up than he is today, even when we're both here."

"Maybe," you half-admitted, glad Luke couldn't see your whole face from his position at your back. 

_"Definitely,"_ he corrected you. "I told you he'd get used to you, didn't I?"

"...You did." 

"Now you know I was right." He paused, just as you turned off the water and reached for a dish towel with which to dry your hands. He squeezed you a little extra tightly before adding, "...I don't think I ever told you this before, but... well, he actually talked to me about you the day after I brought you over here for the first time. He really has always liked you."

"...Oh?" Anakin had told you that already (and plenty more), when you'd been drinking together on his couch. You tried to suppress the memory; sound genuinely curious.

"Yeah," said Luke. "He said I should hang onto you— that I should try hard, and not... well... not fuck things up." His own recollection of his father's words seemed to cause him to think. You waited for him to say more, but all he did was sigh. 

You were quiet for a moment; you wanted to sigh too, but you didn't. Instead, having dried your hands, you shifted your body; turned so you were facing him. Were you both thinking the same thing? That, perhaps, he should have considered what Anakin had said before making a thirty thousand dollar purchase behind your back more than three years into your relationship? You hoped so, but you also didn't want to say it out loud. You'd already decided not to be upset with Luke over Christmas.

"I love you, you know," you settled on telling him, because it was true. You also hoped it might have the effect of preemptively shifting the topic of discussion from Luke's having 'fucked things up' (or Anakin's apparent affinity for you). Again, now wasn't the time to discuss it... particularly considering the fact that you'd committed an arguably more serious transgression since the whole business with that ridiculously expensive old car had played itself out. You didn't like to think about it in those terms, really, but it was difficult not to right now.

"I love you, too," he said, as the smile gradually returned to his face. "I never thought I'd be lucky enough to find someone who could put up with me _and_ my dad at the same time."

You wished he hadn't said it like that. "It's nothing," you assured him, even if that wasn't necessarily true. "I know how much you love him, and when I saw how much it meant to you that I was willing to give this a try, I—"

"Luke!"

"Huh?" He pulled back from you with palpable reluctance; turned to face his sister, who was standing in the entrance to the kitchen.

"Sorry to interrupt," she said to him knowingly, "but did you grab dad's present from the car?"

"Present?" you asked. Luke had already told you he wasn't going to be doing much in the way of gift-giving this year; you were fine with that, given the fact that you were both broke. 

"No, I didn't," he said to Leia, after which he turned to you and added sheepishly, "She said she'd let me put my name on the card because she knows... um..."

With a thin smile, you told him, "I get it." Looking back at Leia next, you asked her, "What is it?"

She smiled excitedly. "It's a photo album— I found a bunch of pictures my mom and dad took before Luke and I were born, paid to have them touched-up and re-printed, and put them all together for him."

"That's sweet," you told her, not even thinking about Anakin's reaction to the single, old picture you'd found beneath his fridge. 

"I thought so too," she said. "They were all in a box in the basement; they weren't even in an album. I thought he might like it if I put them somewhere he could look at them whenever he wants." Again, it didn't occur to you just then that if Anakin had wanted to look at his old photos, he'd likely have taken it upon himself to make them a bit more accessible. (Even if it _had_ occurred to you, of course, it would have been far too late to say anything about it now.)

"I thought it was a pretty great idea," said Luke.

"So did you sign the card, then?" asked Leia.

"No— not yet. Go and grab it from the car, and bring it in here; I'll sign it, and then we can give it to him."

You tilted your head. "Aren't you guys going to wait until tomorrow morning?" 

Luke laughed, and Leia answered you, "No, we've always done it on Christmas Eve."

You didn't have a chance to ask why before Luke piped up, "He's never in a good mood in the morning; not even on Christmas. I can't imagine us doing it any other way."

You thought about how Anakin usually was when you arrived to greet him at the start of your days together; realized that what his kids were saying made perfect sense. 

"I'm going to go and grab the present from the car," said Leia. She looked at you next. "Why don't you go to the living room for a minute; distract him while I take it into the kitchen so Luke can sign the card?"

"Sure," you said, and after asking Luke to put the seasoned, stuffed turkey into the fridge for you, you left for the living room so that you could 'distract' Anakin.

...

"What are they doing?" he asked, exhaling a thick plume of smoke as you sat down beside him. Leia had scurried out the front door too quickly for him to say anything to her, and while you had a feeling that to lie to Anakin was useless, you tried anyway.

"I'm not sure— I think Leia forgot something in her—"

_"Fuck."_

"What?"

He sighed. "I told her not to get me—"

"You have to act surprised!" 

He shook his head and leaned over to put out his cigarette. "You see why I didn't want to do this, don't you?"

You looked over at him as he sat back up straight in his seat. He looked tired; aside from that, his initial enthusiasm at seeing his kids seemed to have worn off, and he now appeared to be in just about the same mood he always was. You tried very hard not to think about what you'd been doing with him in the kitchen earlier as you told him, "Not really. I think it's nice that Leia wanted to do something for you for Christmas."

"I _specifically_ told her not to," he said. 

"Did you get anything for her?" It wasn't until you'd already asked that you realized it was a stupid question; Anakin did all of his shopping with you in tow, and he definitely wasn't one for making online purchases.

He snorted. "No. I'm terrible at that sort of thing; anyway, I did enough of it when they were little." He stopped for a minute then; appeared to think. "...It's not that I don't love them," he qualified somewhat uncharacteristically as he glanced over at you. "I just never loved all the bullshit that came with Christmas— or any other holiday, for that matter. It's all a—"

"'Fucking hassle'," you finished for him, with a completely unintentional smile. He scowled at you; you put your hand on his leg, just above the edge of the socket of his prosthesis. That was unintentional, too.

He looked at your hand and then at you; just as it started to seem like he might be about to say something more, you heard the front door start to open again. You took your hand back hastily, and Anakin reverted to displaying a stony gaze as Leia zipped past you and back to the kitchen. 

Once she was safely out of earshot, he demanded (although he was relatively quiet about it), "Tell me what it is."

You shrugged. "I'm not sure what it is."

"That's a lie." How did he know?

"...I don't think I'm supposed to wreck it." 

"Fuck off. I _hate_ surprises."

With a sigh, you tried, "It's something nice, okay?"

_"What is it?"_

"...It's a photo album," you answered, after a few moments' hesitation. You only told him the truth because he'd started to sound more distressed than surly.

"A photo album?" Now he just seemed confused.

"Leia touched up a bunch of pictures she had from before she and Luke were born and put them into an album."

 _"What?_ Where did she find—"

"The basement," you said. "She told me they were all loose in a box; she thought you might like it if she put them togeth—"

"Goddamn it."

"What's the problem? She only wanted to—"

"Thanks for telling me," he said abruptly, and turned his head in the direction of the kitchen, just as his two children began to cross the threshold into the living room.

You turned your attention to Leia as she stepped up beside the couch along with Luke, and presented her father with a box wrapped in cheerful paper, sporting an ornate bow. "I know you said you didn't want anything," she said, "but I— _we_ — got you a present anyway." She only corrected herself because Luke happened to have nudged her mid-sentence. He looked relieved when she did.

"Princess," he started as kindly as you'd ever heard him say anything, "you know I told you I—"

"I think you'll like it," she interrupted. "Open it; you'll see!" She sounded hopeful; more than that, she sounded quite sure of herself. You still hadn't put two and two together; didn't realize that Anakin had stowed those pictures away and out of sight very deliberately, and a very long time ago.

He conceded by holding out his hand and his hook side-by-side, letting Leia place the box across them. He lowered the whole thing down, set it on his lap, and went to work carefully using the fingers of his right hand to pluck first at the bow, and then the paper. He looked uncomfortable; almost nervous.

Once it was freed from its wrapping, Leia urged him on. "Look inside!"

He suppressed a grimace and obliged, and when he opened the thing up, his lack of enthusiasm all of a sudden finally made sense to you.

"It's you and mom," said Leia happily.

"It sure is," Anakin answered, in as neutral a tone as he could muster.

"There's more," she went on. "Uncle Ben is in there, too."

"Oh." He didn't seem to be quite finished staring at the first picture yet. You stared at it too, because it was easy enough to see it from directly beside him. It was a gorgeous picture, you thought: There was a much younger version of Anakin, clad in what appeared to be the exact same dull olive shirt and shorts he was wearing right now, standing happily next to an incredibly beautiful woman you presumed must have been his wife. They were standing in the room you were in right now— just about where you'd put up the Christmas tree, by the look of it.

You had never seen her before; Anakin didn't keep any of his photos out where they could be viewed, but you realized then that Luke had been right: Leia really did look a lot like her mom. From their high cheekbones to the shape of their lips to their long, chestnut hair; the two of them looked as much alike as Luke and Anakin did. It was striking and at first it made you smile; however, your smile faded when you noticed that Anakin seemed to have frozen in place.

It wasn't until you started to think you ought to say something to try and snap him out of it that he finally came unstuck. He took the edge of the page carefully in his right hand; turned it. The next photo didn't have him in it at all; instead, it was his wife standing next to the man you figured must have been his kids' uncle Ben. Again, they were in the house— this house. You couldn't help but note how very little the interior of it had changed.

He took a moment to stare at that one as well; next, he looked up at Leia. She was still smiling broadly, and so he smiled too. He turned his gaze back to the book on his lap after that, flipped through a few more pages, and then closed the album; set it down next to himself on the couch so that it was resting between you.

"Do you like it?" asked Leia.

"...I love it, princess. It's beautiful." He stood up then, and once he was on his feet, she wrapped her arms around him. He put one of his around her in return, and after giving her a squeeze, he excused himself to the kitchen.

Luke, still seeming more relieved than anything else, took his place on the sofa. As he picked up the album for himself and started to leaf through it, you rose from your own seat. "The kitchen is a mess," you said. "I'll be right back; I just want to put a few things away so your dad doesn't get annoyed."

"Okay," said Luke, and after that he went on to ask Leia something about one of the pictures she'd gathered. You didn't hear what it was, because you were already on your way to check on his dad.

...

"What the fuck did you do to the goddamn counter?" 

"I used it," you said, "but I came in to clean it up because I knew it would bug you."

He was standing directly in front of where you'd prepared the turkey; there were bits of stuffing and slick, oily spots all over the area in front of the coffee maker. He looked a bit lost; didn't say anything else.

"...Are you okay?" you asked next.

"Fine," he said, which was about what you'd have figured he'd tell you.

You shifted on your feet; after that you started, "I'm sorry— until Leia showed up today, I had no idea that—"

"It's okay," he interrupted. "What she did was nice."

"...Something tells me you don't really think so."

He glanced at you, and then he shook his head again. "There was no way she could have known I wouldn't want to look at those pictures. Don't say anything to her about it."

"I won't," you promised, "but are you going to be—"

 _"I'm fine,"_ he insisted. "Where did you put my damn bourbon while you were fucking up my kitchen? If it's in the fridge—"

"It's not in the fridge," you assured him, reaching up into the cupboard to retrieve what he was looking for from the spot in which you'd tucked it safely away. You hadn't wanted to knock it over while you were working, but you certainly weren't stupid enough to have chilled it against his instruction. You set it down on the counter in front of him, at which point he looked at you expectantly. That was when you realized that neither of you had wrapped it or its cap in foam, meaning he couldn't even begin to open it.

"Sorry," you said, and you went on to remove the cap. You took a glass from the cupboard after that (one he could use), and poured a measure of the bourbon into it for him. You walked over to the fridge to grab his egg nog as well, but by the time you'd returned with it, he'd already picked up the glass and emptied the bourbon into his mouth.

He set it down on the counter, looked at you again, and you re-filled it. You knew better than to bother with the egg nog by then, and so you didn't. He emptied that glass, too, and then took as deep a breath as he could. He stared directly ahead of himself for a few moments after that, and stepped over to the table; there were cigarettes and matches there, so he lit one, although he didn't sit in his seat.

You tidied up the counter while he smoked; when he had steeled himself adequately to go back into the living room to rejoin his kids, you would follow him once again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There was a lot more to that initially, but most of it was fairly irrelevant, and again, it was much too long until I chopped it up... so I guess I'll do the rest of the night/the next day later on today or tomorrow, if I have a few minutes to look over what I've spat out so far. Hope this was okay; if you were bored out of your mind, hold up for (among other things) the late-night discussion borne of the photo album— I like how that goes. Actually, I like how all of it goes, but I'm weird, so there's that.
> 
> Christmas just isn't doing it for me this year; writing this helped, but I am still feeling a bit surly myself. Happy holidays anyway; I'm off to cheer up.


	23. Spare Clothes *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter and the next were initially going to be just one instalment, but they were far too long all jammed together, so I've split them up. I apologize sincerely for the spam.
> 
> Chapter 23 focuses on the way Reader feels about herself as she beds down with Lukie on Christmas Eve (how she feels is not that great, but she's pretty good at kidding herself), and the one that follows it consists of a conversation between her and our favourite grumpy old fuck.

"Not now, Luke."

"Why not?"

"We're at your dad's house, _and_ your sister is sleeping in the next room."

"But it's _Christmas."_

You couldn't help but laugh, although you did what you could to stifle it. Luke was adorable when he whined; you almost always thought so... even right now.

"What has Christmas got to do with it?" you asked, still trying your very best not to giggle. You were beneath a warm blanket, facing one another as you lay in Luke's old bed, in his old room. It wasn't especially big (the bed _or_ the room), and that meant it was very easy for him to paw at you, whether or not you were apt to respond favourably to his advances.

"Not much," he admitted. "But I wasn't lying when I said I missed you." He'd already been close to you; at that point he sidled up even closer, and placed his hand on your hip. You weren't dressed, because neither of you had cause to be dressed. Luke was warm; his hair smelled like the garage where he worked, along with the faintest hint of his dad's smoke from the living room.

"I missed you too, but I still don't want your family to—"

 _"We'll be quiet,"_ he promised, sliding his hand off of your hip and down your thigh. When his fingers trailed around to the front of your body and started to prod you between your legs, you realized you were especially glad of the opportunity you'd taken that afternoon to clean yourself up. It also happened to occur to you that you didn't necessarily relish the thought of being able to say that you'd fucked both Luke and his dad in the same house mere hours apart... however, that wasn't a concern to which you could give voice right now, so you buried it.

Burying it might have been why you, completely in spite of yourself, opened up a bit for him; shifted to give him better access to you. He must have been pleased with it, because he leaned in to kiss you after that, and began to stroke you too. Luke knew just how you loved to be stoked. 

You squeaked into his mouth; he pulled back to shush you, but he didn't stop what he was doing with his hand. That made you want to get him back, so you reached down as well to give his cock a squeeze, only to find that he was even more zealous than you'd anticipated. He had to have known you were surprised, because he laughed and shrugged; asked you, "What did you expect?"

Understanding very well that you'd already let him go far enough that he'd be upset if you made him stop, you maintained your hold on him; started to stroke him in return instead of answering. All the while, you continued to suppress for your own sake the memory of your kitchen dalliance with his father earlier in the day. It was difficult, but not impossible; when Luke started to drip into your hand, you couldn't help but relegate yourself to the present moment. That was good, you thought— a good sign. 

He kept poking and prodding; soon, he curled two eager fingers right up inside of you. That made you move your hips and squeeze him again, but this time you squeezed a bit more sharply. He gasped; almost shouted, and then it was your turn to tease him, _"Shhh!"_

You both went on this way for a while: You fondled and caressed each other under the blanket; kissed and nipped and made little noises in response to one another's touch, all as you each grew steadily more excited. It wasn't long before Luke had pushed you onto your back and clambered right up on top of of you, making you emit a frustrated sound as he pulled his hand away from your warmth. 

"What does _that_ mean?" he chuckled, grinding sharply into your leg. 

"It means that felt nice," you laughed back, reaching up with the hand that hadn't been rendered wet and sticky by his anticipation to comb your fingers through his hair. Luke's hair was fine and soft— not entirely unlike his dad's, really. Before you could stop them, Anakin's words from the shower echoed in your mind: _What's taking so long back there?_ You squeezed Luke's shaggy, golden tresses in your fingers at that, and pulled him in for another kiss in an effort to regain your focus. It worked, and it worked fairly well; soon he was nudging your entrance with his own slick tip, eliciting yet another ravenous groan from the very back of your throat.

What business did you have being this hungry for his affection, anyway? You contemplated it very briefly, before somehow managing to reassure yourself that it was still more than alright to want him as much as you ever had. You didn't have to be wholly satisfied with the present state of your relationship to want him to touch you, and the fact that you were apparently making it a habit to fuck his dad had nothing to do with what you were doing together right now.

He was still teasing you, of course; by now you'd let go of his hair, and he'd begun to use the head of his own arousal to draw tiny, wet circles around your hardened little kernel of ignoble desire. He kept on kissing you while he did, and you kissed back more and more excitedly the longer he kept on with what he was doing. You bucked up into him; relished the sensation of the added pressure until you couldn't handle it anymore. That was when you pulled your head back with an utterly unintentional cry, causing Luke to grin. 

"Can I?" he asked, before moving back in to brush his lips up against the skin on your neck. Right at this moment, you loved how small his old bed was; it made you feel all that much closer to him. You supposed Anakin hadn't left any especially visible marks on your neck, because if he had, surely Luke would have noticed them by now. You could certainly _feel_ where you'd been bitten, though; when Luke passed over those spots in particular, you writhed and whispered his name. (You supposed, then, that it was a very good thing he hadn't ventured to crawl down the length of the bed to taste you tonight.)

"Of course you can," you answered him, and that was when he finally granted you the ultimate indulgence; slid himself inside immediately and with as much enthusiasm as he ever had. He liked to feel you pulse around him after coaxing you to your own peak, and you loved it too— that meant you pulled your legs back and gladly welcomed him as he began to move. You placed an arm around him next while wrapping the fingers of your opposite hand up in his hair again. You pulled it sharply this time, not worrying about how much force you were exerting because he liked it; you knew he did.

He took his time building up a rhythm, but once he had, he was delving into you quickly and pointedly; that was what he'd always liked best. "I've been waiting all day for this," he told you happily, seeming grateful to be doing this with you absent the spectre of his car or his debt or anything else (anything else he knew about, anyway) hanging over your shared intimacy.

"You and me both," you lied; in all actuality, you hadn't waited for him at all.

 _"I need you,"_ he breathed next, still driving into you as if he'd been starving for something only you could offer him.

 _If you need me, then why did you do something you should have known was going to push us apart?_ you wanted to ask; however, you didn't. Not tonight. Instead you said, "You have me, Luke— I'm not going anywhere," and this time you were speaking the truth. You weren't about to leave him; that was why, you thought, you'd gone to the trouble of making yourself happy in spite of his missteps. 

You were thinking too much and you knew it, so you stopped; stopped in favour of bucking up into his exertion and closing yourself around him as tightly as you could. It worked as well as gripping him by his hair had worked; more than that, it made him lose himself: Against his own instruction, he shouted as he unleashed upon you, and for the second time that day you found yourself being graciously filled by someone whose touch you'd have been hard-pressed not to crave. 

By the time he had rolled off of you and onto his back, your own guilt and discomfort with yourself had surged again; you let him pull you to his chest, but you didn't relax— not the way he did. Since he couldn't read your thoughts (you'd never been more glad of that), he kissed your head and murmured that he loved you, to which you responded in kind. You had no reason not to; again, it was true.

It didn't take him long to fall asleep, because once he'd been satisfied, it never did. You lay upon his chest listening to his heart beat and his lungs breathe until you were certain he was entirely unconscious. After that, you carefully extricated yourself from both his grasp and his tiny bed, dressed yourself in a set of spare clothes you'd brought from home, and snuck out into the hallway. 

You looked both ways before stepping out of Luke's room (although you weren't sure why; it wasn't as if you weren't supposed to be here), and went quietly off to the bathroom for the purpose of having a shower.


	24. Smile

The texture of Anakin's towels was familiar to you by now, you observed absently as you wrapped one of them around yourself following your time beneath the hot water. They weren't old, but they certainly weren't new either; they felt nice because you washed them with fabric softener. They were an off-white colour— not quite cream, but very close. Anakin had been requiring your help in the shower a bit more often lately; not only had he needed you a few days ago when you'd opened his mail, but he'd also needed you just this morning. The towel you had used to sponge the water out of his hair and off of his skin was still hanging unfolded on the rack so it could dry. It was likely fine by now, you thought; you could probably go ahead and fold it back up.

Once you'd done that, you tucked the towel you were wearing securely under your arm and contemplated what you ought to do next. The obvious answer was to go back to Luke's room and try to sleep, but you weren't tired— to squeeze in next to him without enough space to even toss and turn would be an exercise in frustration. The rest of the house was asleep as far as you knew; Leia had gone off to bed at the same time as you and Luke, and Anakin had said he wouldn't be far behind. You'd offered to help him take himself apart; however, he had refused: He did it on his own every other night, he'd insisted, and he could do it on this night, too. 

His bourbon seemed to have calmed his nerves enough, at least, that he was able to put up with the holiday-themed movies Leia had picked out to watch following her well-intentioned presentation of the photo album. Luke had rolled his eyes and asked about 'normal' TV; you suspected Anakin felt similarly, but he didn't say a word. He actually went so far as to sit politely through two of Leia's choices... even if, by the time the second one had finally ended, everyone seemed to have grown too tired to complain.

That was why you were taken by surprise when, on your way to the kitchen to see about taking a shot of that bourbon for yourself, you came upon the soft light of the bulb set above the stove, along with the smell of fresh cigarette smoke emanating from the room. 

You knew you should have turned around at that point; left Anakin to himself and made an attempt at getting some sleep without the aid of someone else's liquor. As when you'd opened his mail, you were well aware of what the correct thing to do was; also as then, though, you did the precise opposite of what your logical brain was telling you to do.

He heard you before he saw you; didn't even look up before asking, "What the fuck do you want?"

You deliberated a moment before answering honestly, "I wanted a drink."

You'd stepped up next to the table by then, where Anakin was sitting with a glass of bourbon. The bottle was there, too; it still wasn't wrapped in foam, which you supposed was why there were little puddles of spilled liquor dotting the surface all around it. You imagined him trying to pick it up in his hand; it had most likely slipped all over the place while he'd been trying to pour it— his fingers (not to mention the length of his hook) were just as smooth as the neck of the bottle. 

You wished he would have come to you for help, while understanding perfectly well why he hadn't. Anyway, you wouldn't have wanted him to walk in on you and Luke... not that you weren't fairly positive that, since he'd been up, he already knew exactly what you'd been doing with his son less than an hour ago.

"A drink?" he asked, looking up at you. He seemed confused.

"A drink," you confirmed. "I can't sleep."

He laughed unexpectedly at that. "I figured you'd be all tired out by now," he said, and you wondered if he didn't mean what you thought he meant. He'd be well within his rights to make fun of you, you thought. Just how much of that bourbon had he consumed?

You felt your face grow warm, but you ignored it; pulled out the chair nearest Anakin, and grabbed the bottle by the neck for yourself. After refreshing his glass for him (it was nearly empty), you took a shot too, straight from the source. He didn't stop smiling as he watched you, and you didn't answer his observation; just asked, "Why aren't _you_ asleep?" 

His smile faded, and he shrugged as he stared into his drink. "Sometimes I'm not very good at sleeping."

"Oh." That made sense, from what you knew of him.

He glanced back up at you. "You're wearing a towel," he said, as if he thought you might not have noticed. 

"I didn't really expect anybody to be—"

"It's fine." 

"Okay."

Already having started to feel the effects of your first shot wash over you, you reached out to pick up the bottle again for another. Anakin sipped from his glass at the same time; the two of you sat silently this way for a little while, just drinking and staring.

He'd long since finished with the cigarette he'd been smoking when you had first walked in. He took out another then, struck his strip of sandpaper with one of his ever-accessible matches, and said to you as he exhaled his first long drag, "What the fuck makes you so special, anyway?"

"...What?" His query seemed to come from nowhere. You wouldn't have understood what he was talking about, even in the absence of the bourbon (then again, without it he probably wouldn't have asked).

 _"What the fuck makes you so special?"_ he asked once more, and you had to remind yourself that he was more drunk than you were right now. You also considered his question. 

At the present moment, you were sitting in a smokey kitchen, drinking bourbon from the bottle with nothing on your body except for one of your boyfriend's dad's towels. You appeared to have made a habit of fucking them both, even though you were supposed to be working for the one who was more than twice your age; on top of that, you'd had them both today, only hours apart. Your hair was wet, and your skin was still ruddy from the hot water in the shower.

If you were at all 'special', you certainly didn't feel it.

"Nothing," you said. "What kind of question is that?"

"A question I can't figure out the answer to." He was more prompt with his response than you'd have expected; he sounded annoyed, but also earnest— genuine.

"You know I could ask you the same thing, don't you?" you pointed out.

He almost scowled. "I depend on you in a way that makes me want to shoot myself in the face," he said blankly. "You read my mail, treat me like a four-year-old at the grocery store, and fuck me behind my own kid's back. You argue with me, you talk back to me, and you're too goddamn young."

"I'm sorry..." you started to say, but he didn't let you go on.

"I told you I never wanted anyone else after my wife died— not even just someone to fuck. I wasn't lying about that. Even if I _had_ thought someone would want me like _this,_ I wouldn't have tried to find them."

"Don't you think that's a bit extreme?" you asked, deliberately ignoring the point he seemed to be trying to make. You'd been thinking it for a while; now was as good a time as any to tell him that you didn't believe thirty years of celibacy was a particularly common (or even necessarily reasonable) response to losing one's spouse.

"No," he said. "I don't. As soon as I met her, I _knew._ I knew how I felt. It was as obvious as anything; I never looked back."

That wasn't something you would have expected to hear; not just from him, but from just about anyone. People only fell in love that way in books and movies, or at least that was what you had thought. 

"She was beautiful," you said, because all you really knew of her was what she looked like, and that was only thanks to Leia's present. 

"I know— but she wasn't just that."

"What else was she, then?" You'd been curious for a long time; Luke had never been able to tell you anything about her, which made sense if the subject of Anakin's loss was too painful for him to bring up unless he'd had too much to drink.

He sighed, and breathed in some more smoke before sipping once again at his bourbon. He seemed a bit less annoyed now, although you still thought for a minute that maybe you shouldn't have asked any questions. Before you had a chance to chide yourself, however, he generously interrupted your doubt. "She was smart," he said. _"So fucking smart._ Too smart to be with me, anyway; that's how I knew she was kind, too. She was _always_ kind to me, even when I didn't deserve it."

"She probably thought you _did_ deserve it," you pointed out.

He laughed again, although a lot more quietly this time. "Maybe," he admitted, before pausing. "...It doesn't really matter now, though, does it?"

"It does if you remember the way she treated you." You took some more bourbon while you watched him smoke and reflect.

"I remember," he said. "I couldn't forget if I tried— and believe me when I say I've tried."

"That's why the pictures were in the basement, right?" You thought it was sad that he couldn't bring himself to so much as think about her, given how much he'd clearly loved her.

He nodded. "Like I said, Leia couldn't have known why they were down there. I just wish— _fuck."_ He cut himself off, and shook his head. 

"It was nice seeing you smile," you told him, without really thinking. Not that he _never_ smiled now, but he certainly didn't ever do it the way you saw him do it in his old pictures. All he seemed to see when he looked at the version of himself from all those years ago was somebody who had things he didn't; things he still wanted, but which had been wrenched from his grasp. What _you_ saw was someone who was happy— a person whose joy and enthusiasm might once have been rather contagious; as contagious, anyway, as his present melancholy tended to be.

He glanced up from his glass again to peer at you; it looked like he was trying to discern what you really intended to say— as if what you'd told him about liking his smile might mean more than one thing.

"What do you care if I smile?" he asked, looking you up and down. Between your damp hair and his towel, it made you feel a bit self-conscious. This was in spite of the liquor.

"It's my job to make sure you're happy, isn't it?" you asked back, partly because you didn't think you should tell him outright that he was handsome when he smiled, even though he certainly was.

"It's your job to make sure I don't fall on my face and rot into the floor because I can't get up," he countered, which you supposed was also technically true.

"I try to do a bit more than just that."

"You sure do," he said, which made you look down at the surface of the table.

"...I'm sorry," you apologized again. You felt like you had a lot to be sorry for.

"You shouldn't be sorry— you're confusing. That's all I'm trying to say."

"I don't mean to be."

He sighed. "...What _are_ we doing, anyway?" he asked, sounding rather defeated.

"Drinking," you reminded him.

"That's not what I meant."

"Oh."

"You're lucky I'm going to die sooner rather than later," he told you. "You know we can't keep this up, don't you?"

You nodded, ignoring once again his flippancy regarding his own mortality. "I do know. I just—"

"Is it that you're pissed off at Luke and trying to get back at him for spending all that money? Because if it is, I—"

"No! No, it isn't that." 

"Then _what is it?_ I don't understand— it's driving me fucking crazy."

You'd started to feel a bit defeated yourself, by that point. "I already told you I couldn't stop thinking about that kiss you you gave me, didn't I? That it worked; that it made me feel better?"

"It was a mistake," was all he said.

"Mistake or not, it told me a lot about who you are." It really did— Anakin seemed to like to make it look as if he didn't care about anyone but himself, but the way he sometimes treated you (not to mention his kids) implied something very different.

"Who am I, then?" He didn't ask aggressively; wasn't confrontational. If you hadn't known better, you might have thought he actually wanted to know.

"You're kind," you said, echoing what he'd told you about his wife. If she was as he'd described her, it made sense that she'd have been drawn to him. "You're kind when you don't need to be; kind when you shouldn't be. Kind even though I think sometimes you'd rather not be. You're persistent, too— you don't seem like someone who tends to give up on things." That was why it confused you that he had ignored the letter from his respirologist. Conceding to death meant giving up, didn't it? That didn't seem like him— not to you. "You're someone I thought I was going to hate spending all day with," you confessed, "but I don't. I don't hate it."

You'd said a little bit more than you had intended, perhaps, but at least you'd been honest. If there was one thing you didn't do often enough with Anakin (or, more significantly for that matter, Luke) it was speak honestly with him.

You were reminded of just why that was when he said to you simply and abruptly, "I'm tired."

At least he'd let you finish.

He followed up his declaration with, "I'm going to go lie down." He got up from the table after that, but when he did, he almost faltered. You jumped to your feet; put one of your hands on his chest, and the other on his back to steady him. Your towel, miraculously, stayed in place. 

"Will you let me help you?" you asked. "You don't seem like you—"

"Fine," he conceded. "You know I'd be okay if you weren't here, though, right?"

"I know," you said, even though tonight you weren't quite sure. Judging by the way he moved (and by how much of the bottle had already been depleted when you'd arrived in the kitchen), his enjoyment of his Christmas bourbon had been more than a little excessive. 

He nodded approvingly, and motioned for you to begin walking him down the hall. You kept a hand on his back the entire time, ready to steady him as-needed.

Carefully and deliberately, you stepped toward his room together in silence; when you arrived there, he sat down on the edge of his bed. He looked down at the carpet as you did the work of taking him apart. You asked him if he wanted to leave his right arm on, to which he responded affirmatively; after that, he fell onto his side. He was still wearing the clothes he'd worn while the two of you had indulged each other earlier in the day— the clothes he'd been wearing in that old picture of him with his wife.

You stayed by his side for longer than you needed to, and he didn't argue. You were almost as drunk as he was by then (you'd imbibed both far too quickly and a bit too much), so you didn't think twice about it when, eyes having adjusted to the darkness, you began to stroke his hair; admire the sharp, rough handsomeness of his features. You even ran your fingertips along his jaw and his chin, too; it wasn't until they began trailing down his neck that he finally (predictably, perhaps) asked, "What are you doing?"

"Nothing," you said, and you stopped touching him. You didn't leave, though— not quite yet. You remained seated at the edge of his bed; waited until he fell asleep. It couldn't have been long, although admittedly you weren't keeping track of the time. 

You studied his cigarettes on the nightstand, and his ashtray, and his inhaler, too. You glanced at his legs, which were sitting where he could reach them in the morning, even though you'd have been more than willing to help him get them on. That made you think about the bourbon splashed on the table in the kitchen; you supposed you should clean that up before you tried to go to sleep again.

After taking one last look at Anakin's face, you got up to do just that, still clad in just his towel. Once you'd tidied the kitchen table, you stepped softly back down the hall to join Luke. You slid in next to him in that tiny, old bed of his, and curled in closely to him as he draped his arm over you in his sleep. Leia had been right, you thought— it was nice to spend some time away from the apartment; away from the physical manifestation of what was pushing you apart.

For the moment, at least, you weren't annoyed with one another; weren't dancing about as if treading on eggshells, or broken glass. That would come again, you were sure: It would come the next time you needed something you couldn't afford, or the next time Luke came in from the freezing cold hours after you'd gone to bed because he'd been spending time with his car. It would come the next time one of you said something the other perceived as a slight, or when— inevitably— you would start daydreaming about the future, only to remember that it had been drastically altered against your will.

None of that was of any concern right now, though; right now, you just felt _warm._ Between the bourbon and the closeness and the sheer capacity of both your own guilt and a change of setting to temper your chronic irritation, right now everything seemed okay... even if it really wasn't. 

The illusion was enough to coax you into closing your eyes, and closing your eyes was enough to draw you into a relatively peaceful, utterly dreamless sleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Things pick up a bit soon; again, I hope I'm not boring you completely to death... to me, though, this is the height of fun.
> 
> Irrelevant fact: I lost both this chapter and the last one to a careless slip of my finger two days ago, and had to piece them back together from memory, which was actually pretty easy because this is the world I live in now. :)


	25. Capers *

He wasn't flinching this time. 

You were certainly confused by it, but you also weren't about to complain— part of you had thought he wasn't going to let this happen again at all... not after the talk you'd had at the kitchen table over his Christmas liquor. You had thought he was still angry with you; if not about the mail, then about everything else. What business _did_ you have doing this with him? None, really— but you were here anyway; here with him, and he still wasn't casting you away. 

For days you'd been thinking about his shoulders, and so those were what you touched first. They were a bit different from one another; both were scarred, but not evenly so— skin that was smooth on one side was mottled or bumpy on the other, and vice-versa. Again, usually he'd be recoiling from your touch; jumping and tensing as you ran your fingers (or your lips) across the parts of him bearing the heaviest damage. The fact that he wasn't doing that was unusual enough to cause you to be concerned, although not quite so concerned that it made you want to question him about it.

If he was comfortable enough to let you touch him this way, then so be it. His present peace of mind might have been due to something you did; conversely, it might have had nothing to do with you at all... but it didn't really matter, you thought, as long as you both were happy.

Anakin, presently, seemed _quite_ happy. Uncharacteristically so.

"You can bite me," he said, from his position on his back. You were laying in his bed with him; it was, inexplicably, late in the evening— you could tell because his bedroom curtains were open, and the sky outside was jet-black. You hadn't expected him to give you permission to use your teeth on him.

"Are you sure?" you asked, between soft kisses to his collarbone, and to those impossibly beautiful, tightly–drawn tendons in his neck.

"I bite you all the time, don't I?" He almost sounded as if he might be smirking.

"You do," you admitted... and then you began to nibble on his flesh. You started gently, but when he seemed to respond favourably, you went ahead and sank your teeth into him the same way he might have done to you. You were laying on top of him right now, propping yourself up slightly with your arms so as not to obstruct his breathing— you knew better than to place too much pressure on his chest.

He threw his hips upwards and pressed himself into you anyhow as your nipping and sucking gained enthusiasm; you were particularly impressed by this, because right now he wasn't wearing his legs. Your knees were rubbing up pleasantly against his stumps; thanks to the way you helped him care for them, they felt smooth despite their marbled, reddened appearance. His thighs above them were rock-hard, and you could feel his muscles tense with the effort of keeping himself steady while he thrust his body up at you.

Neither of you was wearing anything, save for Anakin's right arm. He must have asked specifically for you to leave him with his hand, although you couldn't actually remember his having done so. You could hardly recall, by now, _anything_ that had led up to this, really. You figured it must have started in the shower... but then, why was it dark outside? Anakin always showered in the morning. 

...Come to think of it, why were you even _here_ at night?

You were alone in the house together, at least. Christmas had happened nearly a week ago; you'd spent some time off work following the holiday. Leia had been the one to check in on her dad during that time, and while you'd offered to do it yourself, she had insisted upon giving you a 'break'. You felt guilty about that, because it meant she thought you were doing a good job helping Anakin, even though you really weren't. This wasn't help, this was indulgence— pure, unfettered indulgence; not just for him, but for you, too. On top of that, being away from him had actually gone so far as to make you miss him, which meant that your time away hadn't felt like a break at all.

You and Luke had spent the time between Christmas and New Year's largely ignoring each other in spite of how friendly you'd been over the holiday. He was preoccupied with his car, and you had been busy feeling irritated and guilty in turns. You'd gotten drunk together on New Year's Eve as per tradition; also as per tradition, you'd had sloppy, tipsy sex that night before going to sleep. It had been nice; you'd enjoyed it, but you hadn't felt especially close to him. 

That might very well have been part of why you'd missed his dad.

"I love the way you feel," you said, pausing your biting to lift your head, and look at Anakin's face. At the same time, you ran a hand down the length of his left arm. You already knew it felt nice to pass your palm over the end of it, and so that was what you did, even going so far as to squeeze his stump gently before retrieving your hand. He didn't wince; instead, he smiled. You hadn't been lying to him before, when you'd said that you liked to see him smile.

"I still don't understand," he told you. He reached up with the only limb he was wearing, then, to place his hand on your back. You were used to the way it felt on your bare skin by now, and so you didn't recoil any more than he had when you'd started to kiss his scars.

"It's okay," you whispered into his ear, having leaned in even further because you wanted to nip at his jaw. "I don't understand why you're doing this, either."

"I still haven't figured that one out," he reminded you. "You're a fucking mystery as far as I'm concerned."

That made you laugh. "No more of one than you are." Your voice in his ear seemed to have made him shiver, so you very gently nosed the tiny, endearing little goosebumps that had cropped up on his neck. After that, you kissed his skin; licked him and nipped him, too, until he let a hushed growl escape his throat. You shifted your body to allow yourself to grind into his thigh at that, because it felt good— _very_ good. You could tell it felt nice for him too, because by that point he'd closed his eyes, and seemed to have started to concentrate on regulating his breathing.

You squeezed his leg between your knees as you sat up to start to move. You were slick against his skin; it was very easy to slide back and forth, and the friction offered by his scars felt shamefully exquisite. It was unique, just like everything else about him. You bit down on your own lip as you huffed and groaned; took the length of his arousal in your hand, too, because he was as hard as you were wet. 

Pumping him in rhythm with your own riding motion, you found yourself unable to keep from gazing at his face. He pulled his eyes back open and looked at you pleadingly. It was just the same expression he had offered you in the kitchen on Christmas Eve, immediately before you'd slipped him into you. 

Just as you started to wonder what it was he might be thinking right now, he opened up his mouth. With a gasping breath, he asked you, "...Is it worth it?"

He could have meant just about anything, you supposed, but you answered him with an emphatic _"Yes,"_ anyway. If he meant being with him like this, then it certainly was worth it— you weren't just doing this for him or even for yourself; you were doing it for Luke, too. You needed to be happy to preserve your relationship with him if it was ever going to have a chance at getting better. Ending it wasn't an option; you'd decided that a long time ago. 

For now, you were surviving, and surviving meant fucking Anakin. Surviving meant kissing him and touching him; biting his neck, and trailing your fingers over his skin. It meant missing him when you were away from him, and whispering kind words into his ear. 

It meant losing control of yourself all over his thigh as you yelled his name and squeezed his length in your hand; it also seemed to mean throbbing against his skin as you felt him begin to leak out over your knuckles.

"Tell me what to do, Anakin," you pleaded, still pushing down hard onto his leg. 

"Fuck me," he said, almost sounding as though he were begging right back. "For Christ's sake, _fuck me."_

You nodded then, and shifted again so that you were straddling his hips as opposed to only his thigh. The cool air hitting the warmth you'd generated by grinding against him was almost painful, but that didn't last; almost immediately, you reached down beneath yourself to ease him into you, just as he'd asked. Truth be told, it was always a bit of a tight fit, but you didn't mind that— it felt absolutely stunning, and besides, you were always more than ready for him by the time you got around to what you were doing right now.

"I needed this," you breathed, as you started to move up and down atop him. You hoped he understood that you didn't necessarily only mean his body, even if you weren't about to say so.

 _"Faster,"_ was his only response to that. "Faster— _fuck!"_

As you obliged, he raised his hand. It had fallen from your back to your leg when you'd sat up on him, but he seemed to have decided to use it, now, to trace lines up and down your stomach with its cool, thin, rigid fingers. That made you whimper as you went on moving your hips.

"I love when you touch me," you told him in a wavering voice, maybe without thinking.

"I wish... I could... feel it... _too,"_ he lamented back, amongst a series of soft grunts.

"Can you feel _this?"_ you asked, and you clenched more tightly around him than you knew you could, coming down hard at the very same time. You might not have wanted to put too much pressure on his chest, but his lower half was another story. You maintained your grip as you pulled yourself up again, and as you went on fucking him, too; hoped you were moving quickly enough to satisfy his desire.

You must have been, because he shouted your name just the same way you'd shouted his not long ago. He gasped and groaned, and if his hand had been made of flesh and bone, you had no doubt he'd have raked his nails right down your stomach. You let out a long, contented hum as you took him, because you already knew you liked to feel him go off from deep inside.

He wasn't even soft yet by the time he started to cough. 

He tried to suppress it at first, but it soon became evident to you that he couldn't. He was struggling as much to take air in as he was to force it out— the bones in his chest looked altogether too prominent, and his gasping turned with haste into a strangled wheeze. 

His inhaler was on the nightstand, not far from his head. You sprang up on your knees to grab it, making sure not to use him for leverage as you did. It was small and blue; there was a lamp on the dresser behind you and it happened to be turned on, which meant you could— graciously— see the little device with ease.

You clasped it tightly in your hand, then drew back to climb off of him so you could pull him up into a seated position.

"Anakin," you said. _"Anakin!"_

...That was when you woke up.

Instead of an inhaler, your sheets were bunched up in your fist; instead of Anakin, there was Luke— although he definitely wasn't beneath you. You must have fallen asleep on your stomach, because you were laying face-down. His body was parallel to yours, although his fingers were snaked between your thighs from behind, feeling at what your physiology had imposed on you as a result of your unconscious thoughts.

"More nice dreams?" asked Luke, who was wearing a coy little smile. He had an oil smear on his face, you noticed, from what he'd been doing outside. That was endearing, but even more so was the fact that you could smell soap on him anyhow— ensuring, at least, that the inside of his damn car hadn't ended up inside you too via his fingers' exploration.

"I barely remember," you said, hoping you sounded sleepier than you felt.

"Hope they were about me," he chuckled, swirling a slick fingertip to expertly prod you where you were most sensitive.

 _"Ah—!_ Who else, Luke?" you asked. "Who else but you?"

"I'm sorry I was out there so late," he said, sounding quite genuine. You wondered what had prompted it this time.

"It's okay," you told him, perhaps a little bit abruptly, as you began to prop yourself up on your hands and knees. "I'm not mad." Maybe you were, maybe you weren't— it didn't matter just then; not as you pushed Luke onto his back and clambered up on top of him, wasting absolutely no time whatsoever.

"I— _woah!_ What were you _doing_ in that dream?"

"This," you said. "Exactly this." 

Luke grinned at that, put his hands on your hips, and met your rhythm. You stroked his chest and appreciated the oil on his face, along with the way his hair stuck to his brow with evidence of the effort he'd already expended on his car throughout the course of the evening. 

You _were_ still mad at him— of course you were. However, you appreciated his having left a little something in his tank for you tonight, so to speak. Little gestures like this one were all you had to hang onto for the time being, and so you did. You didn't feel as if you had a choice.

You would do anything you had to do to make this work, even if to do so meant coming dangerously close to destroying it altogether.

It didn't reoccur to you until you were just about to fall asleep that night that you'd be back on Anakin's doorstep following your holiday 'break' in just a few hours' time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ack, sorry about that. Trust me when I say it works, though.


	26. Basil

"I told you I wasn't hungry." 

"You _look_ hungry." 

"Well, I'm not."

It was your first morning with Anakin since Christmas. You hadn't seen him for days, and his mood was such that a small part of you wondered why you had even missed him at all. The air in the house had been thick with smoke when you'd walked in, which you had done today without express permission, because Anakin hadn't answered the door. He'd been asleep on his sofa when you'd come in, fully-assembled and with what looked like an entire carton's worth of empty cigarette packs spread out on the surface of the coffee table.

His ashtray was full (to the point of being a fire hazard, actually), his clothes were creased and wrinkled, and his hair was disheveled. He looked drawn and dehydrated, and he'd left evidence in the form of an empty bottle (not the bourbon from Christmas, you'd noted) beside the couch, which told you he'd not spent his time alone entirely sober. 

The scene had irritated you at first; Leia had promised to come and check in on her dad. If she hadn't stopped by, then it meant nobody had... and Anakin's having been alone for so long not only meant extra work for you (not that you'd been complaining, exactly, about spending extra time with him lately), but also that he was patently miserable, which bothered you for more than one reason.

If nothing else, though, your frustration had at least taken your mind off of the dream you'd had last night— the one you'd been in the midst of before Luke had come in and woken you; the one that, despite its conclusion, had proven _very_ difficult to force from your conscious thoughts.

When you'd asked him about why it seemed like Leia hadn't shown up, Anakin had informed you that he'd specifically asked her not to come— that he hadn't wanted company, and so he hadn't accepted any. That annoyed you too, but there wasn't very much you could say about it. After allowing him time to smoke a cigarette, you'd coaxed him into the kitchen with coffee; however, getting him to consider breakfast was proving to be a whole other matter.

"You need to eat _something,"_ you insisted, because he did. You were already at the stove with two eggs in hand, which was what had prompted him to reiterate his objection in the first place.

"Fuck off." It had to have been the fifth time he'd told you that today, and you hadn't even been here an hour. 

"No." You started cooking against his wishes, and when he realized you weren't going to stop, he resigned himself to sitting down at the table with his coffee and another fresh cigarette.

The only sound in the kitchen for several minutes was that of the eggs in the pan on the stove, and your own footsteps as you walked back and forth from the cupboards in search of something to put on them. Anakin coughed, but only once; besides that, he was silent. You decided to make toast to go with the eggs.

Not much more time passed before you said, "Here," and slid a plate in front of him. He'd just finished stubbing out his smoke.

He sighed. Without looking up at you, "Why do you always have to make it fancy?"

"It's not 'fancy'," you countered, "it's eggs with toast."

"There's shit all over it." He did look up, then. He was wearing the same face he'd been wearing when he'd noticed the cinnamon toothpaste. You'd never made that mistake again.

"It's pepper and basil," you told him. "It's nice."

"That's what I mean— why does it need to be 'nice'?" He looked perturbed, but also a little confused.

"If something can be nice, then I think it should be." A simple answer, but by no means a lie.

"That explains a lot, I guess," he mumbled, snapping out of his apparent confusion as he commenced jabbing at the yolk of one of the eggs with the foam-handled fork you'd set on the edge of his plate.

"What does _that_ mean?" you asked. You watched the centre of the egg burst and run onto the surface of the ceramic dish, taking little bits of crushed peppercorns and minced basil leaves along with it. 

"It doesn't mean anything," he said, holding the fork up to his face as if to examine the small quantity of yolk dripping off of its prongs. He was quiet for several moments before finally sticking it into his mouth, seemingly for the purpose of taking a cursory taste.

You knew he'd just lied to you, but you ignored that. "How is it?" you asked, of the breakfast he hadn't asked for— the breakfast he didn't want.

"It's fine," he said. Then, almost as if he were correcting himself, _"'Nice'."_

You laughed, in spite of both the tension in the room, and the fact that you couldn't tell whether he was being kind or derisive.

He picked at his eggs for a while after that without saying anything else, and you began tidying his kitchen. You'd need to dump out the ashtrays soon— all of them— and vacuum, too. You wondered absentmindedly whether or not the number of empty cigarette packs on the coffee table would be enough to fill up a whole plastic grocery bag; after that, you chided yourself for being morbid.

Just when you'd started to let your mind wander (unwisely, perhaps, but also inevitably) in the direction of the shower you knew he was going to want in a little while, you noticed that he'd stepped up beside you at the counter. He was standing closely, although he wasn't actually looking at you.

You resumed wiping the sink, because you didn't mind standing in silence with Anakin.

Finally, "Luke is going to sell the car."

"...What?" 

"The car— the one you hate. He's going to sell it."

"Did he tell you that?" Somehow you doubted it.

"No. He didn't have to."

"Then how do you know?" You didn't mean to sound abrupt, exactly, but you knew you did. Luckily, it didn't seem to matter to Anakin.

"I just do. I know Luke— I can tell when he feels like shit."

You snorted disparagingly. "It doesn't seem to me like he feels that way." It didn't— if anything, he was treating your new, debt-laden reality as if it were normal... which, although you supposed it technically was 'normal' by now, you still hotly resented. 

"He's trying to ignore it, but he knows ignoring it isn't working." He seemed to think carefully before adding to that, "You mean a lot to him— more than even I realized."

"If I meant that much to him, then he wouldn't have—"

 _"He wasn't thinking._ Trust me. Do you remember what I said? About him being too much like me? He saw something he wanted and he went for it, but now that he's starting to feel the consequences, he's—"

"Stop," you said, a bit like Anakin tended to say when you touched upon a subject that made him particularly uncomfortable. "Why are you telling me this? Especially if he didn't actually say anything to you." You were finished with the sink by then, so you stood up straight and turned to face him. He did the same, and surprised you with his expression— he didn't look aggressive, or even disagreeable, despite the fact that he'd been both of those things in spades all morning long.

If you didn't know better, you'd have thought he looked a bit forlorn.

"Anakin," you began, and that appeared to be enough to prompt him to continue.

"Do you remember the _other_ thing I said?" he asked. Sometimes, you reflected, he acted as if he were four years old; other times, he was very much his chronological age. Right now, interestingly, it seemed like he might be about fifteen or so.

"You say a lot of things," you pointed out. When you really considered it, you guessed that was true; he really did tend to say a lot of things— when he was talking to you, anyway.

"I told you we can't keep this up forever, and I was right." 

"What has that got to do with anything?" you asked, immediately and without thinking.

He gave you a strange look. "It has everything to do with—"

"No it doesn't." You were back to sounding abrupt.

"How the fuck not?"

"I think you're wrong," you said, believing you'd opted not to answer him. "None of it matters anyway, because I've asked Luke to sell the damn car enough times that I already know he's not going to. Whatever I mean to him, he gets something out of owning that thing that means more."

"I know you well enough to know that if you really thought that, you wouldn't stick around."

 _Fuck off, Anakin._ "However much you _think_ I mean to Luke is exactly how much he actually _does_ mean to me," you told him, surprising yourself with your own candidness. "I'd tolerate just about anything from him, if you want to know the truth. I'm not proud of it, exactly, but—"

He nearly sneered. "That doesn't make any goddamn sense."

You didn't feel like talking about this right now, let alone explaining your motivations in detail. "Can you just trust me when I say it does?" you asked. _"Please?"_

"No," he said, and he'd stopped looking so forlorn by then. He seemed more indignant now, which although it made you feel small, you couldn't begrudge him. "No, I can't trust you. Besides that, I want to know—" He cut himself off and made a noise; something between a sigh and a frustrated grunt. _"Fuck._ Never mind," he said, appearing to have grown annoyed with himself— or maybe just with you. You couldn't tell.

You wanted, firstly, to contradict him about being able to trust you... but he'd said it himself before— between opening his mail and fucking him in tandem with his son, you didn't have much of a leg to stand on as far as trustworthiness was concerned. Still, you thought, you'd never once shared any of his secrets— even the ones that didn't also belong to you. 

"What do you mean?" you asked, instead of arguing. "What do you want to know?"

"Nothing."

"You must want to know _something,_ or else you wouldn't have said—" This time you were the one to cut your own self off, because you felt 'something' come together in your mind. It made you feel stupid; it should have been obvious. "...You're worried about what's going to happen when I'm not angry with Luke anymore, aren't you? To what we—"

"Fuck off." It sounded instinctual, like a purely reflexive response. He started to turn around, but before he could begin to swing his leg in a manner that would allow him to take a step away from you, you grasped him by the shoulder. 

He stopped.

"I hadn't really thought that far ahead," you told him, "if you actually do want to know."

He hesitated. "...Neither had I," he finally admitted, in a more subdued tone of voice than he'd said anything else thus far. 

"...Do we really have to start doing that now?" you asked. "Thinking ahead?" It was an entirely irresponsible question, but you felt like you had enough on your plate already without worrying about what was going to happen if things did, indeed, get better between you and Luke any time soon.

"I'm sure I'm right about Luke and the car," he said, in lieu of actually answering you. "He knows he fucked up, and it's only a matter of time before—"

"Stop," you said again. "Just stop. It's— well, it's nothing _you_ need to worry about."

He looked hurt by that, and right away you wished you'd worded your thought differently. He shook his head and started to turn away again, so you tightened your hold on his shoulder in an attempt to stop him once more. 

It worked, but only barely.

"What _now?"_ he asked, with a distinct air of exasperation.

"I told you before that I wasn't doing this because I was upset with Luke, didn't I?"

"You might have. But when I asked you why you _were_ doing it, all you said was—"

"I know," you conceded. "I didn't give you much of an answer. But I—"

"I'm too old for this shit!" he shouted, with great suddenness. It made you withdraw your hand hastily from his shoulder. _"Did you know I'm too fucking old for this shit?"_

"You started it!" you yelled back at him, having grown frustrated yourself. If he was too old for this shit, then why had he tried to use his lips to make you stop crying? None of this would have happened if he hadn't kissed you. _None of it._

"Fuck off! You jump into my lap every goddamn chance you get! You know why I didn't call anyone for help while you were away? Because I was trying to _get you the hell out of my head!"_

"I've never heard you complain about us fucking," you pointed out, trying your best to sound collected. 

"No, but you don't _just_ fuck me, do you?"

"What are you talking about?"

"I'm talking about all the shit that's worse than fucking."

You knew just what he meant, and you knew right away. 

First, you thought about the way you rubbed lotion onto his legs. You'd been looking forward to that before you'd even arrived; to deny it would have been to lie. You thought about the way you washed his hair, and about your fingernails grazing his skin; imagined them digging into it, too, against your better judgement. You'd been fairly drunk on Christmas Eve, but you could still remember stroking his face until he'd asked what, exactly, you were doing. Lastly (although perhaps most significantly), you thought about curling up behind him in his bed. Somehow, you felt worse about the time you'd done so fully-clothed than about the time you'd spent the entire night with him. How did that make sense?

Your thoughts got away from you even then, and before you could stop yourself, you were thinking about how it might be nice if winter gave you just one more good snow storm before everything began to melt into spring.

That— all of it— must have been what Anakin meant by 'worse than fucking'. 

You found, then, that your stomach seemed to have tied itself in a knot; on top of that, your heart felt as if it had migrated halfway up your throat. You wanted to say something, but you couldn't; not just yet.

"Is it that you have some kind of weird fetish?" he demanded. "Or are you just fucking with my head for the sake of it? I know it's my own damn fault for ever letting myself look twice at you, but—"

"No! What the _fuck,_ Anakin!" You had assumed he'd come to know you a bit better than that. You certainly weren't out to 'fuck with his head', and it annoyed you that he'd presume one would need to have an odd kink just to want to touch him (although you guessed that latter bit had more to do with him than it did to do with you). 

"I can't think of anything else, and trust me when I say I've tried." 

It was your turn to sound frustrated. You still didn't want to talk about this, and anyway, Anakin didn't seem to appreciate hearing nice things about himself: When you'd told him over Christmas that you thought he was kind, he had all but run away from it. This time, you tried instead, "I already told you— what I do with you and the way I feel about Luke have nothing to do with each other."

"Except for the fact that he's my goddamn _son._ I've always tried not to be the kind of asshole that fucks with his kids' lives, and now—"

"You're still not," you interrupted. "Not for as long as he doesn't find out, anyway." ...Had you really just said that? It was too late to take it back.

He must have been as disquieted by it as you were, because he fell silent.

"We both said we wouldn't tell," you reminded him next, which was true... but it was also a desperation move on your part. You shifted on your feet; hoped he'd say something soon. You realized that you should have let him walk away when he'd first tried. Again, though, it was too late. He seemed to have given up on trying to get away.

"...What you're saying is that if nobody knows, then we don't need to stop," he offered. It wasn't a question, but an observation; it told you unequivocally that he knew precisely what you meant. You were grateful, but your stomach still hadn't come unknotted, and your throat still felt like it was being squeezed. You wondered if Anakin felt the same way— not that he was about to tell you.

"That's... exactly what I'm saying," you confessed. You spoke quietly, because you were ashamed of yourself... although clearly not enough to refrain from essentially suggesting that nothing between you and Anakin had to change, even if Luke did extricate from between you the wedge he'd inadvertently placed.

Anakin looked down at the floor; stared at it the same way he'd normally have stared at the kitchen's far wall from his chair.

Just when you thought he wasn't going to say anything else at all, he peered back at your face again. "You're telling me you can live like that?" he asked. He wasn't accusing or insulting. Just curious. 

All of a sudden, you felt completely drained— defeated, if only by yourself. Anakin frequently made you feel defeated, you mused, but he also made you feel other things too. Some of them you'd gone ahead and acknowledged; some of them you hadn't. 

Whatever those things were, they were undoubtedly the reason you answered him, eventually, with, "Yes— yes, I can." You truly didn't believe him about Luke and the car; anyway, even if you had, you'd have struggled to see this any other way. The realization of just how deeply you'd allowed yourself to sink into whatever the hell it was you had with Anakin washed over you like a bucket of ice-water; you felt frozen— stuck.

You also wanted to kiss him. You hadn't kissed him in _days._

He had to have known what you wanted; either that, or you looked like you might be about to cry. Those were the only two reasons you could imagine he had right then for closing the space between you, and proceeding to place his hook-ended arm carefully around your back to pull you in. You liked the way his steel extremity felt pressing into you through your shirt; liked it just as much as you liked the sensation of his false hand on your skin. 

He must have known that, too, because he used his hand to touch your face as you let him kiss you the same way you always let him kiss you. He tasted like days-old vodka, cigarettes, and basil; that didn't bother you any more than anything else that should have bothered you about this. 

You didn't think about that, though; instead, you placed a hand on either side of his waist through his sweaty, wrinkled shirt, and pressed your body into his as insistently as you ever had.

The holidays were over, and you were alone in the house with Anakin. 

Everything, you told yourself, was going back to 'normal'.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for being slow. 
> 
> I don't have anything to say other than that I really liked writing this chapter. These two are pretty fun when they're unhappy with each other, and I like that all they ever do is dig themselves deeper into their stupid hole. :)
> 
> Hope your year is good so far.


	27. Steak

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, Ani & Reader argued in the kitchen last time, only to end up in each other's arms because of course. This chapter picks up (much) later on that same day; however, if you're also interested in the shower she helped him with following their 'chat', you can read about it [here](https://archiveofourown.org/works/28945812). 
> 
> The reason I didn't add that 'chapter' to this story is detailed in its notes; suffice to say, it is fairly long and incredibly self-serving, and not strictly necessary to enjoy the rest of this already-very-long fic going forward.
> 
> I apologize for how very long it took me to update this time.

_"Sit here."_

_"On the kitchen table?"_

_"I can't exactly kneel down on the floor for you, can I?"_

_"...No. No, I guess you can't."_

...

The remainder of your day with Anakin proved next-to-impossible to expunge from your thoughts. From the moment you wrapped your arms around each other following your 'conversation' in the kitchen to the time you put on your coat to leave at the end of the day, your interactions with one another seemed to be governed entirely by the most basal of your feelings.

You'd offered him a shower first; after several days by himself, you had no doubt he'd want one. He had, of course, accepted... and it was once you'd removed all of his limbs and started to get him wet that things took a bit of a surreal turn. He grew rock-hard for you as you ran your hands over his body; by the time you had soaped him up from his chest right on down to the remnants of his legs, you found yourself telling him between kisses that you wanted to watch him come. 

He'd been skeptical of your desire at first, but soon (after telling one another to fuck off, actually) he had obliged; let you stroke him until he finally lost himself all over your hand. It was delightful to watch him coat your knuckles, and the way his noises had echoed off the tiles all around you was equally entrancing. 

You knew he'd enjoyed it just as much as you had when he instructed you to rinse him off and put him back together as quickly as you could, because he wanted to do something for you in return. 

That 'something' was what had necessitated your hopping up onto the kitchen table for him— although only after you'd tugged your own pants off past your hips and over your ankles. You never would have expected the sheer level of proficiency Anakin displayed with his lips and tongue as you placed your legs atop his shoulders: You had to make a concentrated effort not to squeeze his head too firmly between your thighs as he licked and sucked and prodded at your wet, eager arousal. It would have been impossible to guess that he'd taken a decades-long break from using his mouth that way, such were the precision and skill inherent in his technique. 

The whole thing had ended with him consuming everything you'd had to offer as though he had been starving for it, all while you tugged on his damp hair and told him exactly how much you loved the way he made you feel. When you sat up after finishing, he wasted little time in rising from his seat... only to lean down to kiss you, presumably for the purpose of letting you taste yourself on his lips.

Something about the act of renewing your promise not to tell on one another seemed to embolden the both of you— to the point where you couldn't help but observe that you were treating each other in almost the same way you and Luke had once treated each other, long before all of the nonsense with his car debt had sent your relationship spiralling. 

Whatever strange, changeable dynamic you and Anakin shared had evidently morphed again. This time, it had turned into something you knew very well you should be ashamed of pursuing, but which also couldn't seem to be halted by mere guilt.

You wanted him and he wanted you, and no amount of chastising one another or yourselves for it was going to make it stop.

The pleasure you'd derived from what he'd done for you in the kitchen should have been the very last thing on your mind as you shared a surprise dinner that same evening with his two children. In spite of your best efforts, however, Anakin's words (along with his vocalizations, and the way he flicked his tongue against your clit) still reverberated ceaselessly inside your head... even as Luke tried as best he could to get your attention. 

He'd actually resorted to nudging you with his elbow by the time you noticed him trying to snap you out of your thoughts.

"Hey, space cadet— Leia's trying to ask you a question. Where's your head tonight?"

"Huh? I— what?"

You looked around the kitschy, somewhat cramped dining room of your town's local steakhouse as you slowly came back to reality. Leia had taken you and Luke out for dinner that night, ostensibly to thank you for going to check in on Anakin on your days off. While the fact was that you hadn't checked on him at all because you'd thought Leia herself was going to do it, you couldn't actually admit that you hadn't been there without exposing the way he seemed to have engineered some time by himself. 

It appeared as if he'd told each of you that the other would be coming, and then gone on to tell you both not to come... which although it certainly irritated you, you also supposed was understandable. Anakin had always struck you as a solitary person, even though he rarely got the opportunity to spend much time alone. In his position, you might have done the very same thing... and anyway, it wasn't as if you hadn't enjoyed fixing him up after the fact. The more care you had to provide him, the more you got to touch him; the more you got to touch him, the more you—

"I asked you how he was doing when you went to see him last week," Leia said. "Was he okay? I thought it was weird when he told me not to show up."

You'd already talked about the weather, your respective jobs, and a bit about how Luke's work on his stupid car was coming along. Luke and Leia were just about finished their meals by now, although you had barely touched your own— which you guessed meant that you hadn't realized just how lost in your own thoughts you'd become.

"He was fine," you lied, hoping you didn't sound too distracted. "I think the holidays wore him out a bit, though. It seemed like he didn't really want me there." That was a lie too, in more than just one way. Luckily, you'd grown used to lying and omitting all manner of things for Anakin.

"I figured he was in some kind of a mood," Leia said. "I still can't thank you enough for going to check on him when you didn't have to." 

"Don't worry about it; this is perfect," you assured her, referring to the dinner she'd taken you and Luke out to enjoy. "I can hardly remember the last time we went out for anything other than two-dollar tacos." That was another fib; actually, you remembered it precisely— it had been when you'd taken your trip to that lovely little Spanish restaurant for Luke's birthday. It felt like a long time ago; years instead of only months.

"I _like_ two-dollar tacos," Luke interjected contrarily, followed by, "Are you gonna eat the rest of that?" He motioned to your plate, where there still sat most of a perfectly-seared steak, half of a baked potato, and a pile of baby carrots. Even if you hadn't been distracted, you weren't especially hungry.

"Uh— probably not. Not right now, anyway."

"Then is it okay if I ask the waitress for a container to put it in?" You already knew he wanted to take it to work with him for lunch the next day. That was fine with you; if you weren't going to eat it, you supposed somebody should. 

"Go ahead," you told him. "I guess it's better if it doesn't go to waste."

"Thanks," he smiled, and he leaned over to give you a peck on the cheek. You couldn't actually tell whether or not you inadvertently stiffened up at his affection, but before you had a chance to discern it for yourself, Leia had spoken up again.

"...I hope you wouldn't be upset if I told you saying 'thanks' wasn't the only reason I dragged you guys out here tonight," she said, glancing between you and her brother. She sounded uncharacteristically hesitant, but she looked happy. 

"What do you mean?" you asked, offering her a curious look. Thankfully, by now, you were fully immersed in the present. Anakin (and his voice and his cock and even his tongue) had, temporarily at least, been relegated to the back of your mind.

"Well, I wanted to tell you something... _but,"_ she emphasized as he fixed her gaze on Luke, "you have to promise me you won't tell dad yet. I want to wait until he seems to be having a better week; if I tell him while he's in a bad mood, it'll only stress him out. Okay?"

"I won't say anything," Luke promised. "Is everything okay?"

"It's fine," she said. "Actually, I'm pretty excited about it." She looked at you next and asked for confirmation, "You won't say anything either, right? You're with him all day long."

"I won't tell," you said, giving rise to a fresh pang of guilt. You'd been saying that too often lately... although least _this_ secret didn't belong to you or Anakin.

Leia looked over her shoulder and then leaned in to the table, as if she thought her dad might be hiding behind a potted plant in the corner waiting to hear what she had to say. _"I'm pregnant,"_ she revealed with a smile, both more enthusiastically and more quietly than she'd said anything else so far.

Luke's eyes opened wide; he looked surprised at first, but soon a broad grin began to overtake his features. "...You're having a baby?" he asked. He paused for a moment as if to think; then, _"That's so cool!_ I can't wait to be someone's uncle! I'll teach him how to fix stuff, how to drive! It'll be—"

"Calm down, Luke," she laughed. "You're getting ahead of yourself! And I meant it when I said you couldn't tell our dad yet. I'm only a few weeks along; the only other person who knows is—"

"Wait," said Luke. "I thought you broke up with that guy. Didn't you say he was—"

"We did break up," Leia confirmed dismissively, with a wave of her hand. "That wasn't even a month ago, though."

"So is he...?"

"He's being nice about it," she assured her brother, knowing Luke was concerned with the way her ex might have reacted to her news. 

"Good," he said. "Because if he _isn't_ nice about it—"

"Stop it," she told him sternly. "He's been fantastic. Anyway, you know I don't _need_ him for this, and even if I did..."

Leia didn't actually trail off then (she rarely ever did that, in stark contrast with both her brother and her father), but as far as you were concerned she might as well have— you didn't hear much of what she said following Luke's protective assertion. You made sure to offer her your congratulations, and you also made sure to sound incredibly happy while you did... but in reality, her revelation had very suddenly opened up what felt like a sizeable pit in the bottom of your stomach.

You weren't any more proud of it than you were of the way you were beginning to realize you felt about Anakin, but again, pride or shame didn't have very much to do with your more visceral emotions.

Luke's sister was, seemingly incidentally, about to have for herself the exact thing you felt Luke had taken away from you by burying you in debt for the foreseeable future. Worse was that he seemed excited about it the same way you'd envisioned him being excited about your _own_ baby— the baby a large part of you wasn't even sure you were going to get to have anymore. 

It wasn't that you were angry or upset, exactly: You truly were glad for Leia and glad for her child, too; you knew she'd be a fantastic mother. On some level, you even thought it was sweet that Luke was excited to be on the verge of having a niece or nephew. For the moment, though, you couldn't move past the thought that you'd rather see him preparing to be a father than someone's uncle.

You sipped at your water, picked at your cold potato, and listened to the two siblings make guesses about things like gender and height and eye-colour until the waitress finally arrived after what felt like ages, along with a styrofoam container and the bill. After that, you packed up what had become Luke's lunch for the following day, and went through the motions of saying your goodbyes to Leia before retreating back to your car with Luke.

The drive home occurred mostly in silence, at least on your end. Luke was still talking excitedly about Leia's news while you squinted out the front windshield through sleet and darkness, trying as best you could to steer the two of you home without crashing into a ditch.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for being here, if you're still here. Again, sorry if I lost you with any of that, but I've been **dying** to get to jealous Reader and her baby-rabies.
> 
> Next chapter is Luke-heavy, and in the one after that we get to have a bit of a chat with Anakin about his terrible health and why he doesn't seem to give a shit about whether he lives or dies. 
> 
> Fuck, no wonder this thing is getting so long. :|


	28. Moonlight

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Luke is more talkative than Anakin, which I definitely took advantage of in this chapter.

"So... are you going to tell me what's wrong, or not?" 

You sighed, and rolled over to face Luke. You'd been in bed, staring in silence at the crack in the wall, when he'd walked into the room fresh from a shower. You'd felt him sit down on the mattress, but had honestly been hoping to have him think you were already asleep. It seemed he'd known better right away, although you weren't sure what had tipped him off. 

"Nothing," you said. "Nothing that isn't always wrong, anyway. Why?"

"You didn't say much at dinner," he pointed out. "Or in the car." He didn't seem to feel the need to mention that you had barely said a word since arriving back at home, either.

Peering up at him, you tried to discern his expression through the shadows looming about the freshly-darkened room. Luke always turned off the lamp in the hallway when he came to bed after you; the only source of light now was the moon, which was large and bright in the sky outside the window. The sleet through which you'd driven home from the restaurant that evening had unexpectedly given way to a crystal-clear night— not only was the moon highly visible; so were the stars. Lots of them.

"I guess I'm just not feeling talkative tonight," you said, having been able to gather that he at least wasn't annoyed with you. If anything, he sounded concerned... but right now not even that was quite enough to soften your demeanour. The drive home might have given you a chance to calm down, but you still weren't happy by any means.

"Do you want to tell me how you _are_ feeling?"

"Not especially, if you want me to be honest."

He half-sighed your name, and moved to lay down next to you. He smelled familiar, and he radiated a very comfortable type of warmth. You didn't move, even though the two of you were now nose-to-nose, only inches away from one another.

"You always used to tell me how you were feeling," he observed, with what sounded like very little emotion.

"Maybe," you admitted, without actually saying much of anything.

"...I miss talking to you," he confessed in return, this time sounding a bit less impassive. His words took you by surprise.

"I know."

"So... can we talk, then?"

You didn't say anything for a few long moments. You'd already told him you didn't feel like talking. "...What do you want to talk about, Luke?" you asked anyway.

"The fact that this won't last forever," he said. You already knew what he meant.

"Sometimes it feels like it will."

"Did you know I got the motor running last week? It drives, now— I took apart the whole engine; cleaned everything. I fixed the brakes and the transmission, and rewired the heating system. I even replaced the radio, and cleaned the upholstery too. All that's left is the—"

"When are you going to sell it?" you asked abruptly. Maybe you shouldn't have interrupted him, but you truly only cared about that stupid car insofar as removing it from your life was concerned.

His face fell, and he averted his gaze; looked at his pillow instead of at you. "I don't understand why you're in such a big rush to—"

 _"Because its ruining my life,"_ you told him, for what felt like the thousandth time.

Immediately, he started to protest. "It is not ruining—"

"Yes it is! _Yes it is, Luke._ Every time either of us wants or needs anything, the first thing I have to think about is whether or not we can get it without missing a stupid payment. I can't do anything anymore without worrying about your debt first, and I've told you more times than I can count that I don't want to wait six years to start—"

"Is this about Leia?" he asked. "Is this about what she told us at dinner? Because I understand—"

"No, Luke," you interrupted in return. "You don't understand. Because if you understood, then—"

"We still have time!" he insisted. You supposed he was trying to sound reassuring, but you certainly didn't feel reassured. "I still want all the same things you want, I just—"

"No you don't," you countered, with more than a little cynicism. "Do you have any idea how close we were to having enough money to put a down payment on a house before you started all of this? And don't even bother to answer that, because we both know you do. I don't understand why you would throw that away for an old hunk of metal, and the fact that you won't promise to sell it makes it even worse." You paused and waited for him to look you in the eye again. When he finally did, you added as calmly as you could manage, "I feel like you pulled a rug out from under me. I'm scared, I'm angry, and I'm starting to think you lied to me when you said you wanted a family."

That seemed to hit a nerve, but to your surprise, Luke didn't respond by rolling over, or retreating to the living room. After taking a deep breath and appearing to steel himself, he said instead, "I actually thought you'd be proud of me for this, you know."

 _"What?"_ you asked incredulously. That didn't make any sense; you were genuinely confused. "Why would it make me _proud_ to watch you waste thirty thousand dollars?"

"I wasn't thinking about how much it cost when—"

"Then what the hell _were_ you thinking about?"

He took a moment to answer that. "...I was thinking about being the kind of person I need to be before I _deserve_ to have a family with you."

"You just lost me," you said, and he had. What the hell was he talking about?

He went quiet again, but this time, you didn't cut in; just let him think. After a very long stretch of silence, "...Our kids deserve a better guy for a dad than a greasy clown who's never going to go anywhere. Who's never done anything special; who's never followed through with anything."

He couldn't seriously be talking about himself, could he? Before all of this had happened, Luke's sense of responsibility and foresight had often impressed you. He was persistent, and he worked hard; you'd always admired him. "I've never, _ever_ seen you as—"

"It doesn't matter what you see," he said, suddenly sounding uncharacteristically serious. "It's true. You and I are the same age, but you're college-educated with a career to prove it, _and_ you make your living helping people like my dad. I like my job, and I'm good at it... but we both know it doesn't pay much. The way things are run over there, someone's going to have to retire or die before I get promoted. Besides that, all I do is screw around with parts all day; I don't help anybody. Not the way you do." 

He sighed, gnawed on his lip, and looked away again. "You're always doing better and better," he continued, "and it makes me feel stuck. I'd be lying if I said I didn't want the hell out of that car when I first saw it, but it was always about more than just owning a Charger. It was about committing to something I knew wasn't going to be easy— about taking on a challenge, and making it work. You know how good that car'll look on my resumé if I manage to do what I want with it?"

"Why didn't you tell me any of this before?" you asked. Why hadn't he? It wouldn't have made you think better of his choice, necessarily, but it would have at least put it into perspective. You might have been gentler with him... and if you'd been gentler with him, maybe he would have been more gentle with you in return.

"I was scared," he admitted. "I saw how close we were; I felt how badly you wanted it, and I started to panic. I'm not good enough for you, not like this. I needed to do something to show you— show myself; show _everyone_ — that I was worth that much of your time. That much of your _life._ For as much as I love you, you've always freaked me out, because you're way too smart to be with me. I've always known it; always hoped you wouldn't figure it out." 

He shifted a bit on the mattress and added, "I didn't want you to think I was backing out or being a wimp, because I wasn't. I want a future with you now more than ever, but I just... don't feel worthy of it. Like I'm going to fuck it up. I— I mean, I've _never_ felt like I was good enough. When I saw that car, I saw an opportunity to prove something, so I went for it. I didn't think you'd be so upset... which I guess only proves how dumb I really am, doesn't it?"

_...she was smart; too smart to be with someone like me, anyway._

_I always expected her to figure out I was an asshole and leave._

_**He's too much like me.** _

For the second time tonight, Anakin's words bounced around in your head; however, this time it wasn't because you were thinking about fucking him.

You knew very well that Anakin sometimes didn't seem to think much of himself. He'd told you more than once that he had never felt worthy of his wife's love; that he couldn't even begin to understand why she or you or anyone else would ever so much as give him even a moment of their time. He called himself an asshole frequently, and drove the point home with what you now knew was manufactured behaviour. 

He also tended to compare and contrast himself with his son. 

If Luke had grown up under the impression that he was like his dad while also watching his dad denigrate himself and his accomplishments, you supposed that the way he felt about your relationship made sense. When he'd told you his dad had always been harder on him than on Leia, you should have extrapolated a bit more of what he really meant. Suddenly, you felt annoyed with Anakin... not that there was anything to be done about Luke's upbringing now. 

Anyway, you knew he loved his kids; knew he had never failed to provide for them. Every day, he'd done the very best he could do with what he had. It was unfortunate, however, that one of the things Anakin seemed to have was a badly-damaged perception of his own worth. You'd never considered how it might have affected Luke to see so much of himself in someone who often acted like he'd rather be dead than alive. 

"...I do think I understand," you said carefully, after taking in what Luke had to say. You spoke quietly, reaching out to touch his shoulder as you did. 

"I love my dad," he qualified, telling you that you did, indeed, understand. "But he always used to tell me I took after him, and I don't think he ever meant it in a good way. I thought that if I could do something like this on my own without it all falling apart, then it might prove something to you... and to me, and maybe even him, too."

"No two people are exactly alike," you told him. "Not even fathers and sons. If you want me to be honest, I never thought you were very much like him at all— not until you started acting like nothing I felt mattered to you. If I'd known you were feeling scared or conflicted, or—"

 _"I should have been honest with you._ I know."

You inched nearer to him on the bed. In a way, his truthfulness made you feel proud of him, even if it was a little late in coming. You knew Luke liked to put up a brave front; he always had. You guessed that the way he'd been acting since beginning his fiasco with the car— insensitive, rude, even downright mean— was just a different manifestation of that. Maybe he _was_ a bit like his dad, in that respect... but if you could be understanding with Anakin, then couldn't you be understanding with Luke too? 

The stakes with Luke were higher, though... and you still didn't want to be on the hook for his Charger for the next six years.

"You know how much I love you," you said, "but I need you to listen to me when I tell you that you never had to do any of this; that you never had anything to prove to me. I've always thought you were good enough— good enough to be my husband, good enough to be a dad. I never doubted it for a second." You paused. "...Not until you spent all our money without telling me, anyway." 

"I'm sorry— I just—"

 _"Get rid of it, Luke._ Get rid of it, and get our money back. Then we can at least start over where we were."

"You don't understand how close I am," he protested, although this time he did so with less gusto. "All I have to do is make it look good, and then it'll be something I can put on a resumé. Then I can—"

 _"Please, Luke,"_ you begged. "Everything was fine until that thing got here." He didn't know the half of it, you thought fleetingly. "Think about what I'm saying; think about what you want. I can't—"

 _"Okay—_ okay, okay. Just... give me a little bit more time to work it out. _Please._ I meant what I said when I promised to make this worth it, and I don't want to give up now, because then none of it will mean anything."

"How am I supposed to trust you when—"

"You're right— I know... I know, and I'm sorry. Just give me one last chance to prove to you that I'm not fucking around with you here, and you won't regret it. _I mean it."_

"I can't wait six years to—"

"You won't have to," he said simply. _"I promise."_

You sighed, and let your hand glide over his shoulder and onto his neck; soon, you were touching his face. You'd always loved how expressive his eyes were; right now, they seemed sad and desperate— desperate to get back on good terms with you, desperate not to disappoint you. Desperate too, though, to finish the job of proving something he never had to prove in the first place. His mouth was drawn into a thin line, although you'd have liked to see him smile.

That was when you recalled the grin that had washed over his face when Leia had shared the news of her pregnancy with you; even then, you'd noticed it for how strikingly beautiful it was. When Luke smiled in just the right way, he took on an almost feline countenance. It was there when he was being sheepish or coy too, and it suited him; made you want to hold him tight and and stroke his hair.

Next, you thought about the fact that you were betraying him similarly to the way he'd betrayed you; about how your feelings for Anakin meant it was going to be a challenge to stop, if you could manage to stop at all. Luke had hurt you, so you'd gone and done something hurtful in return... something that seemed to be spiralling uncontrollably. Whether you'd been doing it in the name of emotional survival didn't really matter, did it? 

Icy guilt gripped your insides; how were you supposed to expect amnesty from Luke if you couldn't give any back to him? He was worried about not being good enough for you, but over the course of a few short months, you'd somehow managed to render yourself not good enough for him. 

He still couldn't know, of course. You couldn't stand the thought of losing everything.

His smile crossed your mind once more; again, even just the thought of it made you want to hold him... and so that was what you moved to do. You took your hand from his face and snaked your arm around his body, scooting up as near to him as you could before letting him bury his head in your neck. He did it automatically; unquestioningly. It felt good— like this was exactly what you both should have been doing, regardless of how terribly you had each behaved. How terribly you both might very well _continue_ to behave. 

It seemed as though one or both of you might be about to start crying when he put his arm around you in return, and you each fell silent. Neither of you cried, though; maybe you were both too tired to cry. Instead of weeping, you just lay there in the cold moonlight, bodies pressing up against one another as you held on as tightly as you could.

You wanted a home; you wanted babies. You wanted a _life._ You certainly didn't want to wait forever for it, but for Luke you would, whether it was the right decision or not. You'd been as rash and stupid as he had been, and in more than just one way... to the point where you couldn't even reciprocate the gift of his honesty right now without ruining everything. What kind of person did that make you? Who was 'unworthy' now?

You didn't want to leave off at yet another impasse, but presently, an impasse felt like your only option. Maybe Luke was telling the truth about nearly being ready to get rid of the car— maybe Anakin had been right. Conversely, though, maybe Luke was just stalling because he was still frightened. You were angry at what his fear had driven him to do, but your own fear and uncertainty had made you do something just as awful, if not worse.

Just how much Luke meant to you had never been more clear than it was in this moment, despite everything you'd both done to hurt each other. If that dilapidated old car of his could be fixed, then perhaps your bond could be fixed too. The prospect of _not_ fixing it, you now understood, was more terrifying than having to wait or being in debt; it was even scarier than the way you'd recently come to realize you felt about his dad.

If all you could do about any of it right now was hold each other, then so be it. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Guilt will make a person tolerate nearly anything, won't it?
> 
> When you squish a bug, do you ever think about how freaked out it is when the pressure of your hand or foot or the fly swatter or whatever starts to come down on it? I do. I'm scared that when I die, I'm going to just be squished over and over again for eternity. And I don't even kill bugs anymore. 
> 
> Anyway, I hope that was okay. Awkward, guilty snuggles with Anakin on the couch next time. :)


	29. Dragnet

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I guess this is sort of long, but my socially-inept ass is under the impression that most of the people still reading really appreciate getting to sit and talk with Anakin. I suppose I could have edited out the sex flashbacks, but they were hot, so I didn't.

_...and while light snowfall is expected, it shouldn't take too long for it all to melt once things start warming up tomorrow afternoon. Stay tuned for more weather updates and traffic advisories, and we'll see you again tonight at eleven._

You looked over at Anakin, who was sitting beside you on the sofa in his living room, watching the same news channel he always did. It was early in the evening; you'd just arrived back at his house after taking him to a late-afternoon appointment to have an old filling in one of his back teeth replaced. As it turned out, Anakin wasn't fond of visiting the dentist; however, he'd been given a few codeine tablets to take following the procedure... so, if nothing else, he was at least calm.

You had actually told him on your way out of the office that you didn't think he should take the tablets at all; people with degenerative lung disease, in your experience, sometimes didn't respond well to even the mildest opioids. He'd dismissed your concern in a way to which you'd become more than accustomed, though, and that had been the end of that— he'd taken the medicine in the car on the way home.

Having already cajoled him into eating a bit of dinner, you were sitting with him now in the interest of making sure nothing happened to him before his pills wore off. It was a bit late, but you'd already told Luke what you were doing. He'd been fine with it; grateful, even, because of the way he worried about his dad. (His concern was both sweet and convenient, you thought, because it meant you never really needed an excuse to be near Anakin.)

It had been several days, now, since your chat with Luke in bed. You'd been on better terms since then, and going home didn't feel quite so much like a chore as it had before. You still got annoyed and he still got defensive, and you still shook your head when you walked by that car... but in spite of the fact that your present reality hadn't yet changed much, you were at least treating each other with more love and civility than you had prior to talking. It felt good. 

The only caveat to being more friendly with Luke, frankly, was that it came along with an even more acute sense of culpability for you: Not two days after falling asleep with Luke's sweet face buried in your neck, you'd gone ahead and let Anakin push you up against the basement wall again in the middle of getting his laundry done. 

At your behest, he'd paced himself that time; given you just the kind of long, slow, hard fuck you liked best from him. He'd growled and whined into your ear against the effort of restraining himself, but that had only made you squeeze him tightly with your cunt, and push your ass back into his hips to force him as deeply inside as you could. His head hit the same perfect little spot every time he thrust himself into you, and his scars tickled and teased your entrance as he slid in and out. It was all you could do not to scream.

Only after he was sure you'd achieved a hard, pulsing orgasm around his cock had he allowed himself the pleasure of injecting you with the ultimate expression of his own desire. There seemed to be a lot of it that time; somehow, Anakin's sexual energy always felt as if it had been pent-up prior to his unleashing it on you. This was whether you'd fucked him just the other day, or if it had been a week or more since you'd last been intimate. You supposed it was a side-effect of thirty years of celibacy; either that, or it was just the way he was. 

While you'd had lots of fun in the basement, you still hadn't yet had the time or opportunity to climb into the shower to play with him, you thought absently while the ads between the news segments forged on. You wondered what his come tasted like; realized you probably should have licked some of it off of your hand the day he'd gone off all over your knuckles, if you wanted to know so badly. You still bet he tasted like heaven— bitter with a hint of sweetness, maybe; or like shiny copper with a dash of added salt.

Just as you began to notice yourself having become aroused at your own recollection (and speculation), Anakin himself pulled you away from it; yanked you back into the present moment.

You knew he'd said _something..._ but since you didn't quite know what that 'something' had been, you just looked at him curiously; waited, wide-eyed, for him to tell you.

"Where the fuck did you _go?"_ he asked, sounding a little less annoyed at your having spaced out than he normally might have if it weren't for the codeine.

You briefly debated telling him the truth, but decided against it in favour of saying, "Nowhere," instead. You followed that up with, "How are you feeling?" because it had been a while since you'd last asked.

"Fine," he said. "You can go home now, if you want."

"Not yet. You took too many of those things." He _had_ taken what you'd have judged to be too many of his pills, but more than that, you just didn't quite feel like leaving yet. 

He shrugged. "Alright, then," he said, and leaned forward to pluck a new cigarette from the pack he always kept on top of the coffee table. He lit it up slowly, and inhaled similarly; when he blew the smoke out, it was in the form of a thick, obtrusive cloud.

The news had come back by then; the anchor was talking about political instability somewhere on the other side of the world. It seemed to make Anakin shake his head the same way Luke's car made you shake yours. 

"Is this all you ever watch?" you asked him. You'd been curious for a while, and now seemed like as good a time as any to ask.

"Pretty much," he offered readily, without looking at you. You thought he might expand on that, but he didn't.

"Really?" you asked. "Just news?"

 _"Yes._ Why?"

"...I don't know," you surrendered, not wanting to irritate him if it wasn't strictly necessary. "Never mind."

He sighed. After a long pause, "...I like military documentaries. Ones about equipment, mostly." 

"Oh," you said, supposing that made sense. "Are there any other—"

"Dragnet."

"...The old cop show?" you asked, being only vaguely familiar with the programme.

"Yeah," confirmed Anakin, shooting you a look. After holding his expression for a moment, he went on, "I used to watch it with my mom when I was a kid. The old black-and-white ones were better— not that we ever had a colour TV when I was that small."

"...Huh." 

You couldn't think of anything to say. Anakin's age didn't often occur to you anymore now that you'd grown, in your own strange and precarious way, close to him... but just then, the fact of it seemed inescapable. Not that numbers mattered to you (your difference in age was the least of your worries, frankly), but you certainly never would have thought you'd have been so irrepressibly attracted to someone who'd watched the original broadcast of a TV show you were pretty sure your grandmother used to like.

"I don't really 'watch' the news anyway," he continued, as if excusing himself. "It's mostly just there for noise."

"What does that do for you?" you asked. Anakin hadn't ever really struck you as someone who needed noise for the mere sake of it.

"You remember what I said about getting stuck inside my own head?"

You did. He'd told you that while sitting with you on the edge of his bed, just prior to your _first_ attempt at sex in the laundry room together. You nodded.

"Well," he said, "it's easier not to get stuck in _there_ if there's noise out _here."_

"Oh." You understood and respected most of Anakin's other coping mechanisms, which meant you could more than understand and respect that one, too. 

"I already said you could go home," he reminded you next, this time preemptively snapping you out of your thoughts.

"I'm still worried about the pills you took," you said, which was honest.

"I told you I'll be fine." He took a long drag from his cigarette and blew a few smoke rings after that. It was a cute trick; you didn't know why you found it endearing, but you did.

"Did you take _all_ of them?" He hadn't been given many, but you knew that what he'd had was more than what he ought to have swallowed all at once.

"I still have two," he answered, which made you feel marginally better.

"Are you going to take them tonight?" you asked.

"Probably."

"Then I think I should stay."

He leaned forward to stub out his cigarette. "For how long?"

"Until you go to bed, at least," you said, watching with typical fascination as his mechanical fingers did the work of extinguishing his cigarette. You'd asked him before why he didn't wear something to the effect of a glove to protect his hand from smoke and residue; he'd told you that the device was more durable than it looked... and anyway, he'd tried gloves before; they'd all ended up with burn marks and little holes. 

He laughed at that, more loudly than you'd have expected. "Horny, huh?" he asked.

All of a sudden, your face felt hot. "No," you said. "That's not it at all." You looked over at him; he was smiling in a way you didn't normally see him smile. He looked like he was about to laugh at you again.

He chuckled, this time sounding a bit more subdued. "Oh. Oh well. Maybe next time— right?"

You tilted your head, and looked at him curiously. He didn't seem entirely like himself; it must have been the pills. "...Maybe," you admitted. "Tonight I'm just worried about keeping you breathing."

He snorted derisively. "My breathing's fine. Why are you so worried about a couple of little pills, anyway?"

"I already told you they're bad for your lungs. They don't just calm _you_ down; they calm your body down, too— which isn't a good thing if you already can't breathe half the time."

You could have sworn he actually rolled his eyes. "If you say so," he said. 

All you did after that was keep on staring at him. 

"What?" he asked. "What are you looking at?"

"You."

"Why?"

"Because I don't understand."

"Don't understand what?"

 _"You."_ You paused. "...Sometimes it seems like you don't really want to be here. I just... I don't know. I just don't understand it."

He laughed again. "Have we met?"

"Huh?"

"Look at me," he said, even though you already were. "I'm as old as dirt, and I live by myself in a house I couldn't even begin to take care of if the army didn't pay someone like you to help me with it. My wife and my best friend are both dead, my kids haven't needed me for years, and most of me is battery-operated. On top of all that, sex takes the wind right out of me... even though you're the only one who knows it." He chuckled again, and leaned forward for another cigarette. "I'm not about to shoot myself in the head or anything," he added as he struck his match and lit up, "but I'm also not going to stop nature from doing it for me, if that's what it decides it wants to do."

You thought about the day you'd opened up his mail from the lung doctor; about how angry he'd been. He had every right to his feelings, of course; his mail was supposed to be private— but you'd still driven home that afternoon confused as to why he would ignore an opportunity to extend his life. You guessed he'd just given you his reason, or rather, his reasons. They still didn't seem like enough, though; not to you. You wished you could tell him about Leia's baby.

"I wish you didn't feel that way," was all you said.

He blew out a couple more of those cute little smoke rings. "I'm sorry," he told you. He apologized so infrequently that it barely sounded like him. As he studied your face with an expression you couldn't quite read, he added cautiously, "I'm not sure I understand why it matters so much to you— unless it's just about your job. Is it about your job? Because nobody's going to think it's your fault if I kick off, you know. I—"

 _"It's not about my job."_ You sighed, and looked away. You could have told him it was because his kids loved him, or because as someone who worked in healthcare, you ascribed an intrinsic value to life. Those reasons would both have been true, to an extent, but they weren't the reason you cared about him specifically. 

"Well, then what is it?" 

"You already know I like spending time with you. I don't especially appreciate the idea of not having you around anymore."

"'Spending time'? Is that what they're calling it now?" He laughed yet again. You may have been worried about the effect those codeine pills might have had on his breathing, but they certainly seemed to have put him into a different headspace. "You haven't known me long enough to miss me," he went on, "and anyway— as much as I'd _really_ rather not think about it this way— I'm pretty sure Luke's a better fuck than I am."

There was that heat again; the warmth that crept up into your cheeks and overtook your face. You wished he'd stop saying things that flustered you. "...I think you might be underestimating the effect you have on the people around you," you informed him. "Luke was right— you're not the asshole you like to make yourself out to be. Not always."

"Luke said that?" he asked.

"He did— does. All the time."

"If he knew what I was doing with his girlfriend, I don't think he'd be so generous."

You went quiet, because you didn't know what to say about that. 

Anakin shook his head. "I was right," he said. "I never should have looked twice at you."

That hurt your feelings, although you supposed it shouldn't have. He _was_ right; getting close to you had been an awful mistake. "I'm sorry," you half-mumbled, as you stared at the TV screen. "You know that if you want to stop this, we can—"

"No," he interrupted. You waited for him to say something more, but 'something more' didn't come.

You thought you should respond, but you still didn't know what to respond with, so you fell silent again. Both you and Anakin stared at the news for a while. He put out his cigarette, and soon you realized that the two of you had performed your little trick from the night of the snowstorm— the one where you managed to move closer to one another on the sofa without trying. Without noticing.

Because you could— and because you weren't thinking very critically just then— you leaned up against him; rested your head on his shoulder. You were seated on his left side, so you could feel his hook press into your arm. You also felt him stiffen up.

"What's wrong?" you asked, eyes still trained on the television. You wanted to say something before he had a chance to ask you what the fuck you were doing. Not even you really knew what the fuck you were doing. 

He took a few moments to answer. Finally— disjointedly— he said to you in an utterly impassive tone of voice, "I used to kill people."

"What?" You still didn't look away from the news.

"I used to kill people," he repeated, still without much in the way of palpable emotion. "Lots of them."

"Soldiers only do what they're told," you reminded him. He'd said that to you before, back when he'd told you a bit about the blast that had taken his limbs. It was as good a rationalization as any for the guns he'd fired and the bombs he'd dropped, not that he needed to rationalize any of it with you. You didn't judge him for the job he used to do; you never had.

"Thinking about it doesn't help," he said, "but sometimes it's hard not to think about it."

"I wouldn't really know," you admitted, "but I can imagine. I figure it doesn't feel very good."

He laughed again, albeit more flatly than before. "You're right," he confirmed. "It doesn't." 

You'd asked him before what it was like to shoot things from his helicopter; he'd answered that it felt exactly the way it sounded— _blowing stuff up from the air was like blowing stuff up from the air,_ he'd said nonchalantly. Even then, you'd known that there was more to his words than just that. 

An apology would have sounded shallow, so you didn't offer one; however, anything else you had to say on the matter, you suspected, would have been downright ignorant. You left your head on his shoulder in lieu of speaking; additionally, you reached across your own body to place your hand on his chest. You told yourself it was because you wanted to check his breathing, but the reality was that his breathing was fine (or at least, as 'fine' as it ever got). 

Truthfully, you just wanted to show him affection... and so that was what you did, pressing your fingertips into him as gently as you could while still ensuring that he could feel what you were doing.

He sighed, which you could not only hear, but register beneath your palm as well. Next, you felt him tilt his head. When he buried his nose in your hair, you closed your eyes. All there was to hear was the news, along with the sound of his breathing. You thought you might be able to detect the refrigerator's motor humming in the kitchen, too, but you weren't quite sure. 

Something— a sensation, or a feeling; you didn't know what to call it, really— rose up in your chest. It felt like nervousness, but it wasn't cold or jarring. Instead, it was warm. Almost too warm. It made you want to shift even more closely to him, so you did, as subtly as you could (and without jostling the lower portion if his arm too much). You expected him to stiffen up again or move away, but he didn't.

"Anakin," you said.

"What is it?" He did shift then, but it was only to ease his arm out from between the two of you... seemingly so that he could drape it around your shoulders. The contrast between the part of his limb that was made of him and the part of it that wasn't was obvious. You opened your eyes briefly to glance at the end of his hook, and then closed them again. 

"I'm sorry," you told him.

"Sorry for what?"

"This is one of those 'worse than fucking' things, isn't it?"

With one more very quiet laugh (it was more of an exhale than a laugh, really), he agreed with you, "Yeah. Yeah, it is."

"Well, that's what I'm sorry for."

He didn't say anything else; just tightened his hold on you as you felt the rest of his body relax.

Soon, your phone vibrated; when it did, you picked it up from where it had wound up wedged between your leg and Anakin's. 

_Is everything okay?_ read Luke's text. _Should I come by?_

 _No,_ you tapped out, with the hand that wasn't pressed into Anakin's chest. _Everything is fine, your dad's just feeling a bit nauseous. I told him not to take the pills. I'm going to stay with him for a while, just to make sure he gets to bed alright._

_Okay. Thanks for being there for him._

_No problem._ You let your thumb hover for a moment over the keypad before adding, _Love you._

You put the phone back down on the couch beside you after that, and shifted your attention back to the person next to you. The device buzzed one more time, but you didn't have to look at the text to know what it said, so you didn't.

What you did do was turn your head toward Anakin as opposed to the television, and bury your face in the fabric of his shirt.

Unexpectedly, he kissed your head. Then, you just sat.

You might have advised him against taking the codeine, but right at this moment, you were glad that he had. It meant you got to be here with him, which whether you felt like admitting it or not, was exactly where you wanted to be.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There's a bit more to this evening; after that, I'm hoping to post a chapter on Valentine's Day. :)
> 
> Thank you guys for being so charitable. Still never expect anyone to read this stuff, lol.


	30. Come Here *

"You lied to me." 

"What?"

 _"You lied,"_ Anakin reiterated wryly, from his spot beneath you. "You told me you weren't horny."

You smiled, because you guessed you could see how it might look as if you hadn't been truthful. It was late, now; later than you'd expected to end up staying. You were with Anakin on his bed, unclothed and straddling his waist with your knees. He wasn't wearing anything either, with the exception of his right arm, whose hand was resting on your thigh as you used your own fingers to trace lines into his chest.

It was a bit like that dream you'd had, while somehow also not being like a dream at all. The edges weren't blurred; your focus was sharp, not soft. You weren't questioning why it was dark outside, or why you'd stayed; you weren't questioning much of anything, actually. You were just happy to be here— happy to look down on Anakin's face; glad to see him display for you even the tiniest of smiles.

"How do you feel?" you asked, for what must have been the tenth time that night. You knew he'd swallowed the last of those codeine tablets before taking you to bed, so you were still concerned; however, you also couldn't bring yourself to be upset with him. His tooth probably really did still hurt; on top of that, you knew Anakin almost never felt relaxed. If he had access to something that could help him calm down, even just temporarily, you'd have been hard-pressed not to let him take advantage of it. Anyway, it wasn't as though you yourself weren't enjoying his having loosened up a bit tonight.

"Fine," he answered. "I'm fine, I promise." He let his fingers trail up and down your thigh then, shifting his gaze from your face to your leg. He seemed to like to watch himself touch you, you'd noted more than once. Maybe it was because he couldn't feel it; maybe seeing it was the next best thing. You didn't know— all you knew was that it felt nice.

"Thank you," you said to him, as your fingers followed the edge of one of his old burns. The satin-smooth swath of pinkish skin started just below his collarbone, and extended almost down to his navel. The part of it you were tracing was closer to the middle of his chest; the other side of it was more jagged, and trailed town his ribs. It was pretty, you thought. Just like Anakin himself.

"What the hell are you thanking me for?" he asked. He still looked happy to be here, graciously.

"For this," you said, hoping he knew what you meant.

He must have, because he laughed. "You really shouldn't."

"I know," you admitted, "but I that's why I feel like I need to." 

You both knew very well you shouldn't do this together; that fact became more and more evident every single time it happened. He still let you touch him, though; still let you come into his bed with him. The longer you kept it up, the bigger a sacrifice it had the potential to become for both of you... which, unfortunately, only seemed to make it mean that much more. That was why you were grateful to him.

"Then I guess I should thank you, too," he told you, indicating once again that he understood exactly what you meant. Anakin nearly always seemed to understand; his intuitiveness surprised and impressed you, given how solitary a person he tended to be.

"Can I do something?" you asked next, unconcerned with how abrupt it might have sounded. 

"Something like what?" He seemed skeptical.

"I want to kiss you."

"...Go ahead," he offered, looking a bit confused. "You kiss me all the time."

"I mean _all_ of you." You liked kissing his mouth, but there was a lot more to him than just that. 

"'All of me'?"

"Yes."

"...If you really want to, but—"

You didn't even let him finish before sliding off of him, and positioning yourself at the very ends of his leg stumps. You didn't want to give him a chance to change his mind. 

You also didn't say a word before taking one of his thighs in your hand, and leaning down to kiss the very end of it. Immediately, you were glad you had; the way the skin on that part of his body felt beneath your lips was like nothing else. It was mostly smooth, and _very_ warm; it had a few old divots and pockmarks, too. You teased those with your tongue, which made Anakin jump, but he didn't try to stop you.

"I don't get it," you heard him say quietly, perhaps more to himself than to you, as you went on kissing your way up the inside of his leg.

Instead of answering him with words, you pressed your fingers into his flesh; let yourself get lost in the way he felt. You loved Anakin's legs: The very ends of his stumps were bony, and it felt exquisite to run your palm over them. Those hardened, ossified ends segued beautifully into his thighs, where his muscles were big and old and very sharply attuned. He twitched, braced, and relaxed in turns as your hands glided over him and your lips followed their own hungry path, until you finally reached his hip.

Once there, you glanced up at his face, which looked almost bewildered, and then over at his cock, which was half-hard and only getting harder. You smiled because you liked to see it that way; however, you didn't touch it yet as you shifted to give his opposite leg some attention of its own. You treated it just the same way as you'd treated the other one, kissing his scars and gently rubbing the parts of it that tended to become irritated from his near-constant use of his prosthesis. You went slowly, using his breathing patterns and the sounds he made to determine how you should touch him, and where you let your fingers, lips, and tongue linger. He tasted incredible, like soap and salt and _skin._

After licking one last smooth line up the inside of his thigh, you moved onto his hips; nipped at the bones protruding from either side of his still-growing erection. The silken tip of it brushed gently against your face as you moved to kiss his stomach, too. You even tongued his navel, which made him growl softly; it also seemed to cause a tiny bead of his own essence to emerge from his cock. You didn't venture to taste it yet, though. You certainly wanted to, of course, but you weren't finished with the rest of him.

You hummed quietly but happily, not taking your mouth off of him while you showed affection to the scars and burns and other damage adorning his midsection. When that bomb had gone off on him, it had sprayed him with dozens (if not hundreds) of tiny pieces of white-hot metal. Some of them had become embedded in him, and from what he'd told you, picking them all out had constituted a huge amount of very careful work from the doctors and nurses who'd patched him back up. Some of the tiny craters had very distinct shapes to them; looking at them, kissing them, and tonguing them felt a bit like making a trip back through time with him— back to when he had likely needed someone to be there for him even more than he needed it now.

You supposed it was a very bad sign that you found yourself wishing you could have been by his side while he'd recovered. Alas, just like Luke, you'd been only a baby back then. 

The depth of your feelings in that moment frightened you; it was like swimming in a murky pool: You could try to feel for the edge of the deep-end beneath the water with your toes, but you couldn't see well enough to discern with any real precision where the drop-off actually was. 

You'd come up to the middle of his chest by then, and were dragging a hand along his rib cage while at the same time daring to let your teeth graze up against one of his nipples. His hips shifted and he breathed in sharply; you fingered his ribs as his lungs inflated, and a noise caught in his throat. 

He hadn't been eating properly lately, you thought absently; he was almost too thin. It was sometimes a struggle to get him to take a meal, and you couldn't discern whether it was the result of his illness, or if he was simply too anxious lately to eat. If it was the latter, you hoped it wasn't your fault. 

He raised his left arm, the one on which he usually wore his hook. He seemed to have forgotten he didn't have it on; it looked as if he'd intended to touch you with it before realizing it wasn't there. Before he could set it back down on the mattress, you reached out to grasp it with your free hand instead; leaned over to offer it the same affection you'd given to his legs. You tried to catch his eye with yours while you did, and found that he was now looking up at you with the same forlorn expression that often crossed his face when you'd achieved a certain level of intimacy together.

"Anakin," you said quietly, followed by nothing. 

"Tell me what you're thinking about right now," he implored, "because I already know it can't possibly be me."

You shook your head, because to you, that was silly. What else would you have been thinking about? 

"I'm thinking about how I wish I got to do this more often," you said, finally letting the remnant of his arm fall gently back onto the bed. You already knew you weren't going to leave tonight; you hadn't told him as much (and he hadn't invited you to stay, for that matter), but it was fairly clear, at least to you, that it wouldn't make much sense for you to spend the night anywhere but next to him in his bed. 

You loved laying next to Anakin in his bed.

"I'm sorry I keep doubting you," he said, surprising you with his honesty. "I used to do it to my wife, too; she was nice about it, but I know it pissed her off."

That struck you— even before he'd been injured, it seemed as if he'd found the notion of somebody wanting him this way unfathomable. However dissatisfied he was with his physicality, it was clear that the parts of himself he found most objectionable were ones that couldn't be seen just by looking at him. 

"It doesn't piss me off," you assured him, coming to rest very carefully atop his chest while you moved to straddle his waist again. "I just wish you didn't feel that way." You kissed his neck as you brought a hand up to touch the side of his face. 

"I've always felt that way," he confessed, shifting beneath you. You could feel his cock brush up against the back of your thigh; despite his apparent insecurity, he was still hard for you. 

"You shouldn't," you said. "I've never met anyone like you— and I don't mean that in a bad way."

"Luke is like me," he told you. "He's like me, but without all the stupid shit that makes me so hard to put up with. You know you should be at home with him, don't you?"

Your stomach twisted a bit at that, probably because he was right— about the fact that you should have been at home instead of here at 'work', at least. "You and Luke are entirely different people," you said simply. "Luke doesn't have very much to do with the way I feel about you." 

"...How _do_ you feel about me?" he asked, after a brief period of hesitation. You respected that it couldn't have been an easy question to pose.

Your face was still buried in his neck; you'd been nosing and kissing and biting at him the entire time you'd been talking. Not being able to see his face was likely the thing which empowered you to speak so freely just then, against your own better judgement. Really, you weren't thinking. You _should_ have been thinking.

"I feel like I love you," you answered him, regretting it almost immediately, but also knowing you couldn't take it back. You expected Anakin to say something, but he didn't— instead, he went absolutely still, prompting you to pull your head back to look at his face. Now, instead of sad or confused, he looked frightened. "I'm sorry," you corrected yourself, "I just—"

"Stop," he said, and so you did. Did he also mean he wanted you to get off of him? Were you just supposed to stop talking, or stop everything altogether? 

You started to sit up. "I didn't mean—"

 _"You can't love me,"_ he interrupted insistently. 

"You're right— you're right, I can't." You felt cold all of a sudden; as if you'd had every ounce of your own blood drained from your body all at once. What had you just done? You'd ruined this, you thought; ruined the whole thing. You thought about clambering off of him. Thought about putting your clothes back on, thought about leaving. 

You couldn't do any of those things, though, because you were frozen. Your heart was accelerating, and your throat felt as though it were threatening to close up on you.

Having lost yourself in your own panic, you didn't notice him reaching up with his hand to grasp you around the upper part of your arm. It was his fingers that snapped you back into the present; they were hard and rigid, and much cooler than the rest of him.

"Come here," he said, giving you a tug.

"I'm sorry, Anakin, I—"

_"Come here."_

You leaned back down, just as he'd asked; however, you also apologized again on the way. He still looked scared, but he seemed resolute, too— determined. You didn't understand. 

"Put me inside," he said once you were nose-to-nose. "Put me inside, and then kiss me."

"I don't understand—"

"Please," he interrupted. "Unless you don't want to do it."

Of course you wanted to do it. "Alright," you said, "but I—"

_"Shh."_

You obliged him again as you backed your way down his body a bit; just enough so that you could reach behind yourself to fulfil his request, and coax him into you. You were tense, now, but you were still wet— it wasn't too much of a challenge for him to slide in, although you made an involuntary sound at the intensity of the sensation.

His eyelids fluttered, and he made a noise, too... after that, though, he resumed looking up at you. "Is that okay?" he asked.

You pushed down on him, and then you squeezed him. With a nod and a quiet whimper, "Yes— yes, it's perfect. But I still don't—"

"I feel like I love you, too," he confessed.

You balked. "You don't have to say—"

"I don't say things just for the sake of saying them, and you know it."

You did know it. "...What I mean is that you didn't have to tell me that." He probably shouldn't have.

"If you can be honest with me, then I can be honest with you." He didn't move, and neither did you. 

"I— I shouldn't have said it. I didn't _mean_ to say it." He felt thick inside you; thicker than usual, although that might have just been the fact that you were incredibly tense right now. Your body was screaming for you to start to fuck him, but you didn't. His cock seemed to quiver; you suspected that his own body was berating him the same way yours was berating you. 

"It's true, though, isn't it?" He asked as if he already knew the answer. 

You nodded again, pursing your lips as you felt tears start to come to your eyes. You felt stupid— devastatingly, catastrophically stupid. How long had you loved him for, now? Weeks, months? You should have stopped this right where it had started; quit your job the day he kissed you. That's what a reasonable person would have done.

"This is my fault," he said, evidently blaming himself the same way you blamed your own self. 

"Loving each other doesn't make it better," you told him. "Loving each other only makes it—"

"Worse. I know."

"Okay," you said, in a voice far too small for you. "As long as you know."

He nodded back at you, now. "I do."

You realized then that you _needed_ to move. Every time he twitched or pulsed, you ached; thinking about what you'd finally acknowledged feeling for him didn't help at all. After craning to give him the kiss he'd asked for, you sat up tall atop him, and placed a single hand on his chest as you began to roll your hips. 

He took a deep breath in as you started; let it out slowly while you sped up. It didn't take much time before you were fucking him the way you always did when you were the one setting the pace. You and Anakin liked to indulge each other: When you were standing together, as in the basement or when he had you up against the fridge, you tended to caution him to move slowly and he would do it just for you; however, when you had him on his back, you knew he liked for you to go quickly.

Neither one of you so much as tried to say anything, but you also didn't take your eyes off of one another. Yours were still threatening tears, although continuing on with what you were doing made it easier to fend them off.

You leaned down onto his chest, but you didn't stop. You paid close attention to his breathing, but miraculously, he didn't seem to be coming into any distress— not yet. One way in which this _was_ like your dream was that you could see his inhaler on the nightstand out the corner of your eye; next to his hook, his ashtray, and his pack of cigarettes.

He placed his hand on your waist and squeezed, just like when you'd had him on the sofa. Yes, you thought; you really did love the way it felt when he touched you— especially considering that he'd never actually be able to feel it. 

His hair was sticking with sweat to his forehead, so you braced yourself against the mattress with one hand and used the other to push the wayward strands aside. You said his name while you did, perhaps to remind him that he was the only person on your mind right now. He might as well have been the only other person in the entire _world_ right now, as far as you were concerned.

 _"Say it again,"_ he pleaded breathlessly, in a way you weren't used to hearing him speak to you.

"I love you," you said again, without a trace of hesitation. It came far too easily... but then, everything about this had always come far too easily.

"Thank you," he near-rasped. "I love you, too... I—"

You interrupted him by saying his name one more time, and then you sat back up straight so you could push yourself down onto him as hard as you could. You could always tell when Anakin was about to go off; right now was no exception. Despite the leverage he lacked in the absence of his false legs, he thrust himself up into you, too; it made you shout, and you were glad there was no one else in the house to hear you.

Slowly, you relaxed your body and focused on regulating your own breathing, while at the same time continuing to monitor his as best you could following the hot burst of ecstasy you'd just imposed on one another. You let him go soft inside you, but you still didn't move— you weren't ready to separate from him yet; weren't ready to let him slip out of you. 

Anakin's eyes had closed by that point; however, his lips were turned up once again into the tiniest of smiles. He looked happy, you thought; happier than he normally did, anyway. You were glad to have made him feel that way, which made you smile too. 

You were just about to lean down to kiss him some more when your phone started to buzz from inside your pants, which were resting on the floor just beside the bed. You sighed heavily, and although it pained you to do so, you slid off of Anakin for the purpose of reaching down from the edge of the mattress to retrieve it.

"Luke?" 

_"Are you sure you don't want me to come by? Do you need any help?"_

You glanced over at Anakin, then. His eyes were still shut, but the smile had gone from his mouth; it was now drawn into a thin line instead. Luke hadn't acted so concerned about you for months. Not that you had any valid reason to complain, but he certainly had picked a hell of a night to start acting like he cared again, hadn't he?

"No, everything's still okay. I think I might sleep here on the couch tonight— I told him not to, but he took those other two pills anyway, and I just don't feel like he should be by himself."

Luke sighed, much as you had when you'd heard the phone in the first place. _"I'm sorry— you know how he is sometimes. Do you want me to at least come over and keep you company?"_

That put a smile on your face and a knot in your stomach simultaneously. "No," you assured him, "I'll be fine. You have work in the morning anyway, and it's a longer drive from here than it is from home. Get some rest now, and I'll see you tomorrow afternoon. Okay?"

 _"...Okay,"_ Luke conceded reluctantly. _"I'll miss you, though."_

He hadn't said anything like that for a while, either. Again— what a night he'd picked to start.

"I'll miss you, too," you told him. "Don't worry— I'll be fine, and so will your dad."

 _"Thanks again. You know I love you, right?"_

That made you wince; you were glad he couldn't see you. "I love you, too," you said anyhow, which wasn't a lie. It would never be a lie for you to say you loved Luke.

_"Goodnight, then. I'll see you tomorrow."_

"I can't wait," you told him, and then you hung up.

You set the phone back down on the carpeted floor next to the bed, and turned your focus back to Anakin. You wanted to apologize for taking the call; wanted to apologize for Luke having felt the need to check on you, but you didn't.

Instead, you asked, "Do you want to leave that arm on, or take it off tonight?"

"Off, if you're staying."

"I'm staying." 

"Okay."

He offered his limb to you, then, and you detached it from his body, placing it beside its counterpart on the nightstand. Next, you crawled up near to him on the bed, at which point he tossed himself onto his side. He was facing you, which he'd never done like this before.

You shared a fleeting smile with one another, and then you sidled up beside him as closely as you could. Once you were nose-to-nose with him again, you put your arm around his body, and rubbed gently at the ends of his legs with your knees. He returned the favour as best he could; even if he only had half an arm with which to embrace you, being embraced by it felt wonderful. 

Staring into one another's eyes, you lay tangled up in the unique-yet-comfortable sort of silence you'd come to appreciate from each other over the months you'd spent accidentally forging your bond. Eventually, your eyelids started to droop, and your focus drifted. You couldn't be sure which of you fell asleep first, but that didn't matter any more than anything else did to you right now. 

Again (at least for now), Anakin may as well have been the only other person besides you in the entire world.

You supposed you'd have to wait until he showered in the morning, if you really wanted to taste his cock.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope that didn't seem too sudden, or like they didn't earn it. I mean, I'm on chapter thirty, but still. That was so much fun to write. 
> 
> The next chapter will probably be a day late because of life, but let's just say Reader totally forgot about a very important day. :)
> 
> Thank you for being here.


	31. Codfish

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is late enough that I've decided to abandon the concept of Valentine's Day altogether, which is actually good, because it gives me an excellent excuse to add a little bit about how Reader met Luke. :) It's really cute, I promise.

_Shit._

Your eyes scanned the kitchen. You'd just walked into your apartment following your two-day stint alone with Anakin, and the first thing you noticed there told you that you had forgotten something— something rather critical, and which it was now too late to fix.

Luke was only minutes away himself: He'd texted you on your way up the stairs to tell you as much. Usually, upon returning home, you'd have been excited or otherwise heartened to see that he'd left something nice for you on the kitchen table. Today, though, it only served to amplify your guilt over the most recent night you'd spent in his dad's bed— not to mention your having let the significance of today's date slip your mind.

To make matters worse, you could swear you still tasted Anakin's dick in your mouth— you'd gone ahead with your much-anticipated shared shower that day, and you certainly didn't keep a toothbrush at work. You'd enjoyed yourself immensely (you had been right, he did taste like heaven), and Luke's being excessively thoughtful today didn't exactly make you feel good about it.

"Shit," you said to yourself again, this time out loud, as you approached the table.

Sitting atop the surface, close to where you would normally sit down to eat, drink coffee and talk to Luke, were three items: A bouquet of flowers (roses, actually, which made you wonder just how much money he'd spent), a card in an envelope with your name written in Luke's hand, and a very pretty gift bag whose contents you couldn't even begin to guess.

Again, such a display would normally have delighted you, but today all it did (aside from escalate your guilt) was remind you of the fact that you'd forgotten what you typically considered to be a very important date: Today was the day you and Luke had always considered to be your 'anniversary'. You'd been living together for about three years, but it was four years ago that you'd met— met, and become almost immediately enamoured with one another. 

You thought back to that day as you picked up the envelope, examined it, and set it back down again. It had been a cold morning; you'd been running late for work at your previous job. You had slipped on a patch of ice outside of the coffee shop you used to frequent, spilling your fresh drink all over the sidewalk. 

Luke had seen what had happened from his own place in the lineup, and by the time you'd finished cursing yourself for stumbling, he had appeared outside with a sweet smile on his face, and a fresh coffee in his hand. He'd even gotten the cream-sugar balance right; you supposed he must have been paying attention to you while you'd placed your order, or else he wouldn't have known what to have the barista put into it. 

He'd been wearing his work clothes, you remembered fondly— a beige, oil-splattered jumpsuit that covered his regular outfit entirely; you'd learned his name from the small, embroidered patch sewn over the pocket on the right side of his chest. His hair had been messy that day, but beautiful nonetheless, and that smile of his was both handsome and earnest: Easy to fall in love with, you'd only realize after the fact.

The two of you had chatted about nothing for far longer than you should have, and before finally parting, you happily exchanged phone numbers. You'd ended up being even more late for work than you'd originally anticipated, but more significantly than that, you'd made a connection. It was a very strong connection, and one you'd never once regretted— not even recently.

If you had at all regretted it, after all, you'd have been long gone already; the car alone would have seen to that. Whatever happened, the fact was that you still loved Luke more than anyone. This was true no matter how hard it sometimes seemed he was working at making himself difficult to tolerate... and no matter how guilty you'd come to realize you were of also loving his dad. 

"Hey," came a voice from behind you, just in time to jar you out of your thoughts. You shouldn't have been at all surprised to hear it, but you were— you hadn't even heard the door open.

"Hey!" you answered far too loudly, as you spun around to greet Luke.

"I missed you," he said, and he dropped his coat and bag at his feet before practically sprinting over to meet you. "Is everything okay?" 

You knew he meant both with you, and with Anakin. "Everything's fine," you told him, as you let yourself be drawn into his arms. "I'm just glad to be home. But you know you didn't have to—"

"Stop," he said, and even though your face was pressed into the side of his neck, you could tell he was grinning. "I love you, and I haven't forgotten an anniversary yet, have I?"

"No," you admitted, "you haven't. I just thought that this year we weren't going to—"

"Did you open the card yet?" he asked, pulling back to see your face. He was, indeed, smiling... actually, he looked downright coy. 

"No... no, I didn't." You didn't mean to sound skeptical, but you knew you did.

 _"Open the card,"_ he urged, going so far as to take you by the shoulders and turn you towards the table himself. Luke had always been prone to getting excited rather easily, although you realized just then that you hadn't seen him like that for quite some time.

"Um— well, okay," you said, feeling slightly taken aback by his enthusiasm. You reached out to pick up the card again; looked at your name in Luke's small, tidy printing. "I hope you didn't spend too much on—"

"Just open it!"

You did.

You glanced up at him when you saw the front of the card. It had a picture of a to-go cup of coffee on it; the coffee was a cartoon coffee, so of course, it was smiling. 'I LOVE YOU A LATTE,' it read, in happy-looking, bubbly cursive that might just have been as cheesy as the pun itself. You had no doubt that the card was a reference to the day you were marking right now; that made you smile, too— one of the things you'd always loved about Luke was that he never forgot things like that.

He returned your expression; once you'd spent a moment eyeing each other, you went on to open the thing up the rest of the way. You didn't know what to expect, really, which meant you almost fumbled as a thin, square little piece of paper fell out of it and into your hand.

"What's this?" you asked.

"Look at it," he said.

"I don't underst—" You cut yourself off mid-word; your capacity to speak seemed to leave you as you came to comprehend just what you were looking at. After confirming that the piece of paper was, in fact, what you thought it was, you shifted your gaze back to Luke. "...Is this real?" you asked quietly, fighting to keep your own expression neutral.

"Of course it's real," he said. He still looked happy, but there was a hint of fresh trepidation in his voice that told you he had likely been expecting a different initial reaction to the contents of his card.

Indeed, you should have been overjoyed... and maybe you were; you couldn't exactly tell. Mostly, you just felt very suddenly overwhelmed; shocked— as though the slightest draught pushing its way in through the window could have knocked you to the floor. That didn't make sense; again, you should have been thrilled... but then, _this_ didn't make sense, either. Luke had just gone and presented you with the very last thing you'd have expected, far sooner than you'd ever have expected it.

"This is more than twice what you paid," you said, looking him in the eye.

"I know."

"I thought you said you were going to—"

_"I was wrong."_

You realized, then, that your hands were shaking, although perhaps not before Luke did. Carefully, he took both the cute coffee card and the bank receipt out of your tenuous grasp, and gingerly set them back down onto the table. Next, he sandwiched your hands between his, likely in an attempt to keep them from trembling. The skin on his palms was as warm and calloused as it had ever been; the way it felt was familiar— a lot like his scent, or the way he held you at night.

"I don't know what to say," you admitted, sincerely hoping that you sounded more awe-struck than flustered.

"Just tell me I did the right thing," he said. His enthusiasm had faded a bit by then, but his intonation was hopeful. He was chewing on his lip, clearly waiting for you to indicate to him that you were pleased with his choice.

"You did do the right thing, Luke, and I'm proud of you... I just—"

"There's more," he reminded you, giving your hands a loving squeeze before reaching around you, and picking up the pretty little gift bag that had been sitting on the table. "This is for you," he said, as if you didn't already know. With the slightest of chuckles, "I hope you're not mad about how much I spent."

You wanted to laugh at that, but you couldn't... although you supposed you also couldn't begrudge him buying you a gift for your anniversary, given that his bank balance was currently sitting at more than seventy-thousand dollars. The sight of the number on the bank slip had seemed surreal to you; you almost wanted to pick it up again to ensure you'd read the number correctly. 

Taking the bag from his hands, you tried to peek inside, but your view was obscured by crinkly handfuls of pink and white tissue paper. "What is it?" you asked, trying to read him.

He just shrugged in a manner you could only have described as 'playful', and motioned at the gift.

You still felt guilty that you hadn't remembered to do anything special for him; however, what he'd done for you was already far more than you'd ever have anticipated— certainly more than you could have hoped to match. You'd have to tell Anakin he'd been right, you thought offhandedly. He certainly did seem to know his son. 

You pushed aside the layers of tissue paper and reached into the bottom of the bag, not knowing quite what to expect.

When your hand closed around what felt like a tiny, velvety little box, you nearly stopped breathing altogether. You didn't open it right away; instead, you looked back at Luke. It had to be a necklace, you thought. Or earrings, or maybe a bracelet. It couldn't be—

"I hope you like it," he said, not knowing he was interrupting your thought. "I told the guy at the store that I didn't know what I was doing, so he—"

 _"Luke,"_ you near-gasped, as you took it out of the bag, and flipped open the tiny lid.

"...Yeah?"

"Is this what it looks like?"

"Well... it's _supposed_ to look like an engagement ring. Like I said, I told the guy at the store I had no idea—"

"It's _beautiful_ , Luke." It was. Both the delicate-looking silver band and the immaculately clear, intricately carved little stone set into it had caught the soft light in the kitchen as soon as you'd opened the box. The diamond was genuine from what you could tell; it looked almost as though it had been cut into the shape of a rose: It bloomed out from the silver in a pattern which strongly resembled the hearts of the flowers still sitting on the table. 

You looked between it and Luke, trying your best not to gape. If he'd been aiming to surprise you, he'd certainly succeeded. 

"...So, you like it, then?" he asked, sounding nearly as anxious as you felt.

You made yourself smile, because smiling seemed appropriate. "I love it," you told him, which wasn't a lie.

He quit biting on his lip and ventured with a measure of cautious optimism, "Does that mean you're going to put it on?"

You nodded. "Yes— yes, that means I'm going to put it on." 

Something in the darkest corner of the back of your mind screamed at you then; shouted and protested and argued that the very last thing you deserved was to put that ring on your finger, whether you wanted to or not. And you _did_ want to put it on— more than almost anything. _What are you going to do about his dad, now?_ that tiny, well-concealed little part of your brain asked with a heavy dose of obstinance, only for you to ignore it. 

You thought for a moment, and then you extracted the ring from the box. "...Do you want to help me?" you asked tentatively, holding the ring out to him. You thought he might like to be the one to slip it on for you.

It was his turn to nod this time. He exhaled in relief, the tension left his shoulders, and a broad grin returned to his face as he took the ring between his thumb and index finger. Luke was beautiful, you thought, inside and out. You were lucky to have him, no matter how careless either of you had been recently with what you shared.

"I guess this is a 'yes', then," he observed, sliding the ring effortlessly onto your finger, just like you'd always imagined he would. You were impressed; it fit perfectly— it reminded you of the day you'd met. Reminded you of that perfect coffee he'd brought out to you, just when you'd needed it most.

"It's a yes," you confirmed for him, taking a brief moment to admire how it looked on your finger before letting him take your hands in his again. "I just don't understand. You told me just a few days ago that you weren't sure about selling the Charger; that you wanted more time with it." It was still outside in the parking lot, actually— you guessed it was set to be carted off to its new owner soon. "What made you change your mind?"

"A few different things," he said. "Talking with you the other night was part of it; thinking about Leia helped, too."

"What else?" you asked. You were curious, and you suspected there was more to it than just that.

Luke shifted on his feet. "...I guess I didn't realize how badly I'd screwed up until I started thinking about the way things used to be between us— how much I missed it. I was pissed off at you for a long time because I thought you just didn't understand. It was... I don't know, right after Christmas, I guess, that I started to see how much of the way we were treating each other was my fault." He paused, and then said something you wish he wouldn't have: "You should probably be thanking my dad more than you should be thanking me for this, if you want to know the truth." 

"...Your dad?" you asked. "What has this got to do with him?"

"He always used to talk about my mom; about how much he missed her. Whenever something bad would happen or he had a shitty day, he would tell me about how different everything would be if she were still around." He paused to glance down at the floor. "...He might not seem like the kind of guy who really thinks about that stuff, but he does. A lot. He... well, he sort of told me not to tell you he said anything, but he actually pulled me aside to talk to him while we were visiting over Christmas."

 _What the fuck, Anakin?!_ "He did...? What did he say to you?"

"Do you promise not to tell him I told you? It'd just piss him off if he knew."

"I promise," you said. It was the sort of promise you were getting awfully comfortable with making. 

"Well... it was a bit like what he said to me when he first met you— that you were special; that I should try not to fuck things up with you. He told me I was being stupid, and that if he'd been lucky enough to have my mom around when Leia and I were younger, he'd have bent over backwards to keep her happy if that was what he needed to do." He stopped, and lifted a hand to touch the side of your face. "I think you remind him a bit of her, even though he didn't exactly say it like that. He likes you a lot; even told me I'd be screwing up his life, too, if I made you leave. I think he's afraid you'll quit on him, actually... it's hard for him to get along with people, but I guess he gets along with you."

Perhaps having realized he was veering off-track, he shook his head; abandoned that train of thought. You were grateful for it. "Anyway," he went on, "it made me think— especially after finding out about Leia's baby. I don't want to throw away what might be my only chance to have what my sister and I missed out on when I was a kid; what my dad always wanted to give us, but couldn't. I thought I was proving something to you, but all I ended up showing you was how much of an idiot I was. I hated fighting with you, and I don't want to end up like my dad— he's sad and lonely and pissed off, and it makes him act like an asshole. It's not really even his fault he's like that; it just _happened._ So how much of a dumbass would I be if I risked doing it to myself?" 

His hand fell to your shoulder, and his smile came back to him. "He was right, and you were right, too. Don't get me wrong, I still love that car— hell, if I thought I could keep it, I would— but right now, I know I can't. Not if I want to hang onto what we have. I've never met anyone like you before, and I was stupid to hurt you." He laughed quietly and added, "I guess I'll have to figure out a better way to prove to both of us that I'm worth your time, won't I?"

You wished he hadn't said so much, while at the same time also wishing he'd kept on talking. His hand felt heavy on your shoulder, and you didn't know what to say. You should have been more patient with him, you thought; should have known that he'd been experiencing a bout of insecurity when he'd bought that car. You should have understood that he'd snap out of it. 

Falling for his dad, though, hadn't been about patience or lack thereof. Much like the way Anakin had come to be the person he was now, the way you felt about him had just seemed to _happen._ You didn't rightly know whether it could have been prevented, because you didn't have access to an alternate timeline— one in which Luke hadn't made his purchase; one in which Anakin hadn't caught you crying into his sink.

Luke was looking at you expectantly again. You realized you needed to say something, and say it soon. 

"You've always been worth my time," you finally managed to tell him. You hoped you didn't sound too shaky, because you were being quite sincere. Your eyes stung and you felt like crying yet again, although just as when you'd been in bed with Anakin, wishing it away didn't seem to be working. "I'm sorry I was so angry," you said. "I'm sorry I didn't trust you, that I didn't—"

"Hey," he interrupted gently, taking the hand that had been resting on your shoulder and using it to wipe away the tears that were already escaping your eyes. "Don't you even _think_ about apologizing— you have nothing to be sorry for. I was the one who caused the problem to begin with; it only makes sense that I be the one to fix it. You were right to be pissed off; I never should have set us back like that. I was too stubborn about it, I—"

"It's okay," you said, silencing him with a series of kisses to his jaw, and to the side of his mouth. _"It's okay."_

You couldn't stand to hear him take responsibility for what he'd done, knowing that you weren't about to even consider doing the same. The sheer egregiousness of your own actions loomed over you; if there was anything worse than spending tens of thousands of dollars behind someone's back, then surely it was fucking their dad under the guise of helping him function. 

Anyway, it turned out that Luke had, technically, been right about what he'd told you in the first place— that he'd gone and turned that car of his into something which had now ended up putting you both further ahead than you'd been to begin with. Maybe his initial intention hadn't been to sell it, but sell it was what he'd done... and what he'd done was what really mattered.

If you wanted to, you thought, you could both pay off the debt he'd racked up, _and_ start shopping for a house. A down payment of more than thirty-thousand dollars was definitely adequate.

The only problem was that the prospect of having what you'd wanted more than anything only a few months ago now frightened you. Why the hell were you so scared?

That was a stupid question; you knew why you were scared— you knew exactly why. It was just another thing that Luke could ever, _ever_ know.

"Happy anniversary," he said as you pulled back from him, having managed to put a precarious halt to your own crying. You'd placed your own hand on his face by then; it happened to be your left hand. You watched as your ring continued to reflect the room's light.

"I'm sorry I didn't do anything special for you," you told him, unwilling to admit that you'd forgotten the day altogether. 

"There is _one_ thing you can do for me," he offered, "but only if you really want to."

You gave him an inquisitive look. "What is it?" Between your guilt and how very much you loved him, you'd have done almost anything for him just then. 

"Come for a ride with me."

"You mean...?" 

"Yeah," he confirmed, without you having to say it. "I mean, you don't _have_ to. I'll understand if you don't feel like it. But I'd love to show you everything I managed to do with that car before it's gone. Would that be okay?"

With a deep breath, you nodded. "Okay," you agreed. "I'd love to." 

You'd always admired and appreciated how much Luke enjoyed his work, partly because you knew what it was like to derive satisfaction from what you did for a living. Now that his Charger had ceased to be a continuing source of discomfort or annoyance for you, taking a ride in it with him didn't seem like such a bad idea.

Actually, it felt like the very least you could do for him, given the circumstances.

"Let's go, then," he said, planting one more quick kiss on you before turning to sprint back over to the front door. His excitement appeared to have come back to him; he was quite happy, it seemed, now that he knew you weren't upset with him anymore. It made you feel both wonderful and terrible to know how very much he seemed to value your opinion of him. "Guess what else we're going to do tonight," he grinned, shrugging his jacket back onto his shoulders.

Having already followed him and begun to do the same, you said to him, "I couldn't even begin to guess— what is it?" 

"On the way home from the bank, I picked up the ingredients for those things from the Spanish restaurant— the things with the breadcrumbs. You want to help me make them?"

You laughed, because you would have thought he'd forgotten all about the croquetas by now. "Of course I want to help you make them!" It had been forever since you'd cooked anything decent with Luke; something that wasn't plain rice with beans, or that detestable Hamburger Helper you'd grown so tired of. "Ham or codfish?"

"Codfish," he said. "And big shrimps with garlic, and green peppers with sea salt, too."

Again, you were impressed he'd remembered; also again, Luke's capacity for remembering things just like that had always been one of your favourite things about him. 

"That sounds perfect," you said. "I can't believe how long it's been since—"

"I know," he admitted, taking you by the hand again as you exited the apartment together. "If you want to know the truth, spending time in the kitchen with you was one of the things I was thinking about when I decided it was time to get rid of the car."

"Really?"

"Really. Do you know how much I missed watching you chop up onions, or kissing you while we waited for the oven to heat up?"

"I think I might," you told him, because of course, you'd missed it too.

You'd missed it so much that you didn't give your own dishonesty another thought before following him down the stairs, and into the car he'd repaired with his own two hands. The car you'd spent months hating, but which was now about to thrust you into a life you thought you'd have to wait years and years to come within a stone's throw of being able to achieve. 

The same part of your brain which had shouted at you about putting on your new engagement ring asked you with its characteristic stubbornness how you planned on managing the growth of what you had with Luke in tandem with the relationship you'd accidentally built with Anakin, but again, you ignored it.

You and Luke hadn't been this happy with one another for what felt like a very long time, and you weren't about to spoil it with concerns over morals or ethics, or who else besides him you happened to have fallen in love with.

All of that could wait for a day that wasn't your anniversary.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My thought is that Anakin's feelings are going to be so hurt it's not funny. But he's also likely not going to say shit about it, because I mean... he kind of can't. :| Anyway, he kinda helped make this happen. Hmm.
> 
> Thank you to anyone who's still with me, here. This story is long and slow and weird, and I love you for reading it anyway.


	32. Screwdrivers

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's been a while. Sorry about that! Here's a longish, Anakin-centric chapter. Thank you for sticking with me, if indeed you have stuck with me. <3

_"What the hell, Anakin! It's eight-thirty in the morning!"_

_"I woke up at three."_

...

If Anakin had been up and dressed and drinking vodka in the kitchen that early, then it meant he'd been up for three and a half hours longer than you when you walked into his house that morning. You'd been engaged to Luke for nearly a week by then, and Anakin still didn't know about it. Leia did, though, which meant it would only be a matter of time before he found out. In spite of that, you hadn't yet been able to bring yourself to wear your ring while you were at work— something about it just didn't feel right.

You were quite sure Anakin was going to be upset with you for hiding it no matter who ended up telling him; however, hiding it was something you'd already decided to do, at least for now. It felt a lot easier than being honest, and while you ought to have known your secrecy wasn't sustainable, you couldn't quite seem to acknowledge that particular truth. Not when it was simpler to continue on like nothing had changed... and really, nothing _had_ changed, had it? You still felt the same way about Anakin as you had the day before you'd slipped that ring onto your finger for the very first time.

You hated yourself for being afraid to lose what you had with him, but hating yourself didn't allay your fear.

 _It is what it is,_ you thought, giving your head a shake for the purpose of pulling yourself back into the present.

You were sitting across from Anakin at his kitchen table right now, inadvisably participating in an inappropriately-timed round of drinks. You had at least gone to the fridge for orange juice to mix the vodka with, but that couldn't erase the fact that you were getting drunk on it at work before the clock had even struck nine.

The worst of it was that Anakin had hardly even needed to try to convince you to do it.

"This is a terrible idea," you said, reaching toward the centre of the table to pour each of you another drink. You must already have been tipsy, because you felt disproportionately proud of yourself for getting him to take his with the orange juice, too. "Your snow shovel broke yesterday; we have to go to the hardware store. How am I supposed to drive you around like this?" You paused. "...What time was it when you started, anyway?"

"Started what?" He'd just lit a cigarette. You knew he meant to drop his match into the ashtray, but he missed his mark and dropped the burnt little stick onto a plate with a hardened half-sandwich sitting on it instead. You didn't bother to fix it just then.

 _"This,"_ you said, sloppily tilting your glass toward him before tipping it back the other way, and near-emptying it into your mouth.

He just shrugged. "I already told you— I got up at three. As far as I'm concerned, it's noon right now." He smiled after that, and blew a thick plume up into the air. 

It was cloudy outside, and the sky was still dark, so the light hanging from the ceiling just above your heads was switched on. You watched the smoke swirl in and around it; noticed that the bulb itself was stained with long-dried, drippy-looking streaks of nicotine. It was incandescent— who knew how long it would be before it needed to be changed?

His smiling made you smile, even if he was only doing it because he was hammered drunk. You were about to ask him exactly _why_ he'd opted to start drinking after waking up in the middle of the night, when you registered the presence of something sitting on the far side of the table— something that surprised you a bit. You hadn't noticed it, at first, amongst the flyers and other mail that tended to build up in that particular spot. Once you did, though, it was unmistakable.

"I never did say anything to Leia about the photo album," you offered, still sober enough to know that explicitly asking if you might be allowed to flip through it was probably not a good idea.

"Oh— good. Thanks." He glanced over at it himself as his smile reverted back to the thin line into which his mouth was most often drawn. He was quiet a moment before beginning to qualify, "It's not that I didn't appreciate the effort she put into it. It's just—"

"I get it," you interrupted, in the interest of sparing him from talking about it if he didn't want to.

You figured he must have appreciated that, because he went quiet again. You did too; however, you couldn't help but notice him still eyeing the album. He must have been looking at it, you thought— maybe after waking up, or before he'd tried to go to bed in the first place. Maybe he'd needed a drink because of the way it had made him feel; conversely, maybe drinking had made him feel brave enough to take it out. There was no way of knowing, unless he decided to tell you.

He smoked for a while instead of saying anything, and your poured yourself another drink. He'd slowed down on the vodka a bit by that point, which made sense: You might have been tipsy, but it was fairly clear that Anakin was already most of the way to being completely hammered. Given how long he'd been awake, that made sense, too.

"You want to see something?" he asked, unexpectedly breaking your mutual silence as he near-missed the ashtray trying to put out his smoke. 

"Something like what?"

"Pass me the book."

"You mean the—"

"Yeah. The photo album." He motioned at it with his hook.

You gave him a look, but did as he'd asked; slid the thing over to him without saying anything else. After pushing his drink and his ashtray out of the way, he opened it up and began to leaf through it. There were two photos mounted on each of the pages; it was hard to see them from where you were sitting, but you tried anyhow.

Somewhere near the middle, he found what he'd been looking for, and slid the album back across the table so you could look at it. "That was my Cobra," he said, as he maneuvered another cigarette out of his pack and stuck it into his mouth.

"You flew that?" you asked, leaning in to get a better look at the two photos of the compact, sleek-looking, dust-coloured attack helicopter affixed to the page. Its rotors were long, and so were the barrels of the enormous guns attached to its sides.

"It's only got one engine," he said, "but it's a hell of a fucking engine. It goes a hundred and forty miles an hour; I used to take it up nice and high, and use it to wreck shit I could hardly see." Holding his smoke between his lips, he reached sloppily across the table and tapped the gun with his black, plastic fingertip. "The missiles steered themselves. I'd usually sit up top and fly it; Ben would get in underneath and fire the guns." As he took his hand back, he retrieved his smoke from his mouth and put it back between his fingers. 

Exhaling, he went on, "Sometimes we'd switch. You can fly it from either seat, but you've gotta be in the bottom one to shoot shit. I used to love the way it felt when the wind would catch it, or when I'd have to make a sudden turn. I might've been the only guy I knew who didn't mind bad weather. They stopped using them around the time shit started to go down in Afghanistan, but I'd been out of the army for years by then."

You nearly laughed. Anakin sounded almost wistful— the enthusiasm with which he talked about his helicopter (even drunk) was not unlike the joy that came through in Luke's voice when he talked about the cars he fixed. It wasn't just their eyes (or their lips) that were the same.

"Why aren't _you_ in this picture?" you asked, in lieu of voicing your observation.

"Because I took it. This was right after we got to Iraq; I'd just finished hosing her down, and making sure she was ready to fly. I sent these home to my wife— she didn't like what we were doing, exactly, but she was nice about it anyway. She knew how much I loved going up in that thing, guns or no guns." 

"How much _did_ you love it?" You wanted to hear him say it out loud. Anakin very rarely talked about things he loved.

Eyes fixed on the photographs in front of you, he answered, "More than just about anything else I can think of." He looked down at his cigarette, as if to ascertain its length. It was about three-quarters of the way finished; much of it had burned off while he'd been talking. He took another haul, but the smoke seemed to catch in his throat.

He coughed, and put it out. 

"I'm sorry," you said.

"Sorry for what?"

"Sorry you had to give up something you loved."

He shrugged. "Even if I _could_ still fly one, I sure wouldn't be doing it anymore by now." He sipped at his drink and eyed his cigarettes, although he didn't take out another one just yet.

"...Can I turn the page?" you asked, perhaps emboldened by your own drinking. You hadn't exactly moderated your own consumption since sitting down.

"Why the hell would you want to turn the page?"

"Because I didn't get to look at it over Christmas."

"I should have known you'd take a mile if I gave you an inch." He was looking down his nose at you, but his disdain was all for show.

"Is that a 'yes'?" You smiled at him.

"Fuck off."

"Thanks, Anakin."

The next pair of photos took you back from the Middle East; back to the very kitchen in which you were sitting right now, in fact. The first one depicted Anakin by himself— seated at the table, smoking a cigarette. You almost laughed again, for how very familiar it seemed. The next one would have been the same, except that his wife had come into the frame. She was standing behind him, with her arms wrapped around his shoulders. He was smiling in that one, but he wasn't looking at the camera— instead, he was gazing up at her.

"What?" he asked. Your expression must have changed.

"Your wife loved you," you said. It was obvious— she'd have loved him the way he was now, too, if how she used to touch him and look at him was any indication.

"I like to think she did."

You turned the page again, and this time you could feel the grin that spread across your face at the sight that greeted you: Anakin, along with his friend Ben, wearing what you assumed must have been the most formal iteration of their military uniforms. They both looked quite serious in the first photo; however, in the second, they looked like they'd just broken out into laughter. They seemed to be standing in the front yard of the house, although you couldn't quite be sure.

 _"What?"_ he asked again, finally having gone for his next cigarette. 

"You already know I like it when you smile," you reminded him, letting your fingertips trail over the surface of the thin plastic sheet protecting the pictures in the album. You already felt warm thanks to the vodka; seeing Anakin with a grin on his face by his best friend's side only contributed to that warmth. 

Anakin, for his part, was staring morosely at the end of his cigarette.

"I know it must sometimes seem like you don't have much to smile about these days," you started, "but—"

"Don't," he cut you off. "Quit it." It was mostly when you were trying to be positive for him that Anakin seemed to be annoyed by you.

You did 'quit it', but you also continued to leaf through his pictures, stopping only to drink. Anakin watched you while he smoked.

There were more photos of Ben, both in and out of uniform; there were lots of his wife, too. You could always tell which of those had been taken by Anakin, because of the way she looked at the camera when it was him who was behind it. There were even a few of him by himself, including one in which he happened to be shirtless. It was different from the one you'd found beneath his fridge; instead of smiling, he was staring at something that wasn't in the frame, with— predictably— a lit cigarette hanging out of his mouth. 

His circle of people in his younger days might have been small, you thought, but it was also obviously very strong— knitted tightly together, like the patches of a well-made quilt. You were sad for him; sad he'd lost two people who had quite clearly meant almost everything to him.

Anakin didn't look all that different in his old pictures from the way he looked now... natural limbs, blonde hair, and unblemished skin notwithstanding. When you glanced back up and across the table at him, though, he seemed uncomfortable— you knew him well enough to know that his discomfort stemmed from a very old, very persistent mixture of insecurity and grief.

"I like you better now," you said as you closed up the album, likely not thinking hard enough about how he'd take it. You could look at the rest of the pictures later, you decided— preferably when you'd sobered up. It didn't occur to you then that Anakin was only letting you flip through them because he was drunk, too.

"Don't say stupid shit," he scolded.

"I'm not— I mean it. I like you the way you are." You did. You also wanted him to feel better, even if your attempt at quelling his obvious diffidence had fallen a bit flat.

"Sadist," he spat at you, stubbing out his cigarette on the plate with the crusty sandwich.

 _Jeez._ "It's not that," you said, shaking your head. "I don't like that you had to suffer, but I like who you ended up being." People were, essentially, the sum of their experiences. You appreciated the person Anakin had become as a result of what he'd been through.

"I hated you for finding that first old picture under my fridge," he said. You might have thought it an odd or disjointed thing to say, but you knew better.

"Why?"

"Because it's not me." He glanced back over at the album in a way you'd almost have described as fearful. More quietly, "I stopped being the person I was in those old pictures a long time ago, and I don't want you to go around squinting at me, trying to see shit that's not there anymore."

"People change," you told him. "Time has a way of doing that to them. It doesn't mean—"

"Don't get me wrong," he interrupted as if he hadn't heard you. "I was still a miserable asshole back then— but I didn't look like something out of a shitty sci-if movie. I could _do_ things. People didn't stare at me like— I just— _fuck._ I don't know." He closed his eyes and took a deep breath; after that, he suppressed a cough and finished, "You get why I don't like you seeing me the way I used to be, don't you?" 

"Yeah, I do," you confirmed for him. "But we both know you only pretend to be an asshole." He'd fooled you for a while, but he couldn't anymore, no matter how hard he tried. You thought about telling him about his shoulders— about how the way he carried himself gave him away; about how you didn't think he could stop being the guy in those old pictures no matter how hard he tried... but you didn't.

"Being an asshole makes everything easier," he told you. "If you hadn't stopped thinking I was an asshole, you'd never have let me kiss you. You'd never have kissed me _back._ Hell— if I hadn't screwed up trying to be 'nice' that day at the sink, none of this would even be a problem."

This time, you were the one who shrugged. "It is what it is, isn't it?" Usually, you'd only have said that to yourself. 

"I guess you're right," he said... and then he moved to stand up.

"What are you doing?" you asked, watching him balance precariously on his feet. They were made of steel and plastic polymers just like his hand; however, they typically stayed covered by a pair of fairly lifelike silicone sheaths. Still, Anakin always wore shoes or boots over them to enhance his own stability, which was something you found yourself grateful for right now.

Just as you began to get up yourself (the room blurred a little as you moved, but you didn't stumble), he answered you, "I'm not sure." You'd noticed him really beginning to slur his words; wondered if he shouldn't go back to sleep for a while. Then again, you hadn't wasted any time trying to catch up to him, and you were fairly sure you didn't look or sound much better.

You stepped over to him anyway, and reached up to take him by the shoulders. He swayed, but like you, he didn't stumble. He also looked down at you, and surprised you by pulling you in with his left arm. His hook pressed into your back, and he held you firmly against his own body while he reached up with his hand to touch your face. He even went so far as to stroke your skin with his thumb, to which you squeezed his arms before sliding your hands beneath them and around to his back.

"I love it when you do that," you said, your faces now within inches of each other. 

Again, you hadn't expected this from Anakin, not this morning... but you also weren't about to refuse him. You'd been exactly as affectionate with him as you'd grown accustomed to being since your engagement to Luke; you couldn't help it— although you hadn't confessed your love for him again since that night you spent in his bed. Saying it once, frankly, had been one time too many, no matter how true it was.

"You love it when I do _what?"_ he asked.

"Touch me." You smiled, and leaned your head into the cool, hard cradle of his palm.

He pulled back a bit, seemingly to take in the sight of his own hand on your face. 

Before he had a chance to say anything about it at all, you added, "It's different, but in a good way. It's smooth and gentle, and it's kind. _Like you_. I love that you think to do it— I love that you _bother_ to do it, even though you can't feel it."

"...I sometimes like to imagine what it feels like," he confessed, sounding almost embarrassed. With the tiniest hint of a melancholy little smile, "I've been doing that since before any of this even started."

"What does it feel like?" you asked. "In your imagination, I mean?"

Promptly, "Like something I thought I wasn't going to get to feel again."

You were grateful to the vodka, now, for seeming to enhance your ability to be honest with one another. You two always communicated better drunk. "I love how strong you are, Anakin," you told him. "You have no idea how tough you really are, and it drives me crazy sometimes. Why can't you see yourself the way I see you? The way your kids see you? You're so much more than who you think you are."

He almost seemed to wince in response to your words. "I really can't get past the idea that you're just being nice when you say shit like that. You're _so fucking nice."_

"I've already told you I'm not that—"

"But you _are,"_ he insisted, tightening his hold on you. "You thought you were going to hate working here, but you did it anyway because you love Luke— and now you're letting me do shit like _this_ because—"

"Because I love _you,_ too," you reminded him, with— perhaps— a tinge of sadness in your voice. So much for once being one time too many. "And that's not up to me, is it?"

"No," he agreed. "No more than it's up to me, anyway."

He slid his hand around to the back of your head. You could feel a few strands of your hair as they became caught up in the joints of his fingers, but it didn't hurt— actually, it felt good. _Familiar._

Since he'd already begun to lean into you, you craned up to meet him and relished the sensation of your lips pressing together and, soon, parting. His smoke and his vodka and his orange juice all tasted exquisite together; you could even detect the tiny bump denoting that new filling in his tooth as you ran your tongue around the inside of his mouth. He might have been drunk, but not too drunk to get hard: You could feel that, too, pressing heedlessly into your hip as you slid your hands down to his waist, and pulled him even closer.

"I don't want this to stop," he said, when your kiss broke. "It never should have started, and now I don't want it to stop, and I can't—"

"It doesn't _have_ to stop," you interrupted. "We're not going to tell— right? So it doesn't need to stop." You didn't care how desperate you sounded.

He kissed your neck; went on to let his lips brush up against your ear. His lips were perfect— perfect like the rest of him, whether he thought so or not. You could have held him like this forever; could have—

"You should wear your ring," he said suddenly. "It's pretty— _it suits you."_

"I— what? How do you—?"

"I've known for days."

"Did Leia—"

"No." He ground himself into your hip and asked, "You keep it in your car, right? In the glovebox? It's wrapped up in tissue paper."

"I don't understand how you—"

"I almost spit a glob of phlegm into it," he revealed. "You were taking the cart back to the front of the grocery store the other day, and I was looking for—"

"Goddamn it, Anakin." You didn't yell; in fact, you spoke barely above a whisper.

"I really was just looking for a tissue." He didn't sound as defensive as you might have thought. He also didn't sound angry— you'd have expected him to be pissed off at you for hiding it in the first place, if nothing else. To you, now, he seemed almost... _apologetic._

"I'm sorry," you told him. "I'm sorry I—"

 _"It's okay._ I don't want you to be sorry. This is what you want, isn't it? You wouldn't have been so upset with Luke to begin with if it wasn't."

"Of course it's what I want, but it was also a lot simpler before you— I mean, _we—"_

"Quiet," he said, as he let his hand trail down the side of your neck. His fingertips gave you goosebumps, and he went slowly enough that you could feel your hair gently coming free of his joints as he moved. "I'm happy for you, and I'm proud of Luke— and I'm not going to fuck up what you two have. I'm not going to let _you_ fuck it up, either."

"I already told you I didn't want to stop doing this with you."

"Is that why you hid your ring?"

"I was afraid you wouldn't want—"

"I'm _always_ going to want you," he insisted, dragging his fingertips over your skin as if he could really feel himself do it. "Remember what I said? The first time I ever met you, I knew that being around you was going to be hell."

"Does that mean you—"

"It means I'm stuck."

"Stuck?"

"Stuck." He sighed, and looked down into your eyes. The ability to make prolonged eye contact was not necessarily one of Anakin's strengths; you appreciated the effort it took for him to be so direct. "I don't want to fuck up my family or hurt my kid, but _I love you._ I never thought I'd have to deal with anything like this, and now I don't know what the fuck to do about it." He spoke earnestly, and when he was finished, he smiled at you again. It wasn't a happy smile.

"I'm sorry," you told him once more. You didn't know what else to say.

"'It is what it is'," he said, echoing the sentiment you'd expressed only a few minutes prior.

"So what do we do?"

"I don't know... and I'm too fucked up to figure it out right now." He shifted on his feet. You were glad that the two of you were hanging onto each other, because he did falter that time— if you hadn't been holding him up, he'd have fallen straight into the table.

"I think you should sit down," you said.

"...I think I should go back to bed for a bit," he countered, as what seemed to you like a wave of nausea washed over him. 

"Do you want me to help you?"

"Actually, I... I was hoping you might want to join me."

You nodded. "Sure— sure, I'd love to."

"Alright, then," he said, and he took his arm from around you; tried to take a step back. It didn't quite work out— you ended up grabbing back onto his bicep to keep him steady. 

"Let's go slow," you suggested, partly because you didn't exactly feel steady, either.

He nodded, and you commenced leading him out of the kitchen and down the hallway, toward his bedroom at the back of the house. 

Anakin hung his head as he sat down on the edge of the mattress, and remained quiet as you knelt unsteadily in front of him to begin taking him apart. When you asked him if he wanted you to leave an arm on for him, he told you he didn't.

It wasn't long before you completed the task. When you did, you stood up and walked around to the other side of the bed; soon, you were laying next to one another. He was on his back, while you were curled up at his side, resting a hand on his chest.

You didn't bother to undress either him or yourself, because although you were both horny, you knew very well that you were too drunk to fuck. 

"I hate myself for wishing I was the one who got to give you that ring," he murmured sleepily, "but you know what? _I wish it was me."_

You didn't know what to say to that (there was nothing _to_ say to that), so you kissed his neck and closed your eyes, and let yourself fall asleep alongside him.

Maybe you'd be sober enough to drive to the hardware store when you woke up— maybe you'd even reach into your glovebox, and put on your ring. 

You no longer had any reason not to.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wrote three different versions of 'this', and that was the best of them. I like it, so I hope you did too. Planning the wedding is going to be a beautiful hell.


End file.
